


The Song and the Breaker of Chains

by Dovah_1016



Series: Lylenna and Miraak [1]
Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Author is a lore-altering fool because reasons, Denial of Feelings, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Freeform, Hello did someone ask for whump?, How Do I Tag, Humor, I want this to be a long fic, My First Fanfic, Oh hey what is sleeping, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, Tags May Change, These two idiots are trying their best, This won't be as dark as the tags make it out to be, Who is more messed up?, but i have a short attention span please bear with me, especially with magic, frig
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-01-03 09:15:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 23
Words: 37,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21177014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dovah_1016/pseuds/Dovah_1016
Summary: Lylenna Rostian escaped death countless times before, and it seemed she would have to do it again. Being mantled with the title of Dragonborn and saddled with all of the duties and responsibilities that came with it was...unsuspected but not surprising given her life up until then, but a new title was the least of her problems. To defeat Alduin, she needed peace. For peace to happen, she needed the Empire, the Stormcloaks, and the Thalmor to halt their deadly pissing contest for JUST A MOMENT. And for that to happen, she needed a miracle. With the Civil War at a deadlock and the dragon threat growing, the only thing she COULD do was follow a lead to some trouble on Solstheim and hope that by the time she cleaned up that mess, the conditions on the mainland would improve enough for something to give. She never thought she would leave Solstheim with the very person she sought to defeat there, and nor did she expect the past to come back and haunt her.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Ah yes, hello! This is my first (official, written-out) fanfiction, please please PLEASE comment and give criticism! Comments are life! The tags make this fic seem really dark and I will throw out squik warnings at the start of each chapter that needs them. This fic is also heavily inspired by music and I will cite the songs that are the inspiration for/are used in each applicable chapter. Anyways, here goes nothing!

Apocrypha was as cold as it was dark. In some places, the darkness was so heavy and oppressive that it physically hurt to exist in it. Even the water was dark— or whatever the foul liquid was. Lylenna wasn't sure. The twisting towers of time-worn pages and books smelled of such rot and decay that had Lylenna not been wearing her mask, she could not have breathed through the stench. Every so often, an otherworldly wind would blow and stir up loose paper, and the reek would force its way in under the edges of her mask.  
She despised this wretched place. From the first moment she set foot here, she hated it. Well, no— She hated Apocrypha before she even knew its repulsiveness. She hated it from the instant that Hermaeus Mora first appeared to her in that frostbitten cave in the far-flung ice floes to the north.  
Bloody madman didn't know what he was dealing with, she thought bitterly, shuddering at the phantom memory a slimy tentacle caressing her face, accompanied by a voice that grated on her every nerve and instilled such a discontent in her that she never could seem to get the voice out of her head. She had had little choice but to complete Septimus’ task; the poor bastard had lost his mind over the Dwemer box lodged in the ice, and she had been the fool to take pity on him. Perhaps it had been a madness of her own.  
Lylenna deftly avoided a whip-like tentacle that had decided to rise from a nearby pool of liquid to strike at her— she was no fool and no stranger to this realm now, sidestepping the appendage and continuing onward before it had time to swing again. There was no time to stop in Apocrypha. Between the tentacles and the other various denizens of the plane, standing still for too long meant that one of those things would pounce.  
She had no intention of becoming Hermaeus Mora's champion and had been unwaveringly certain when she had told the prince to fuck off and find another soul to torment. Alas, it was for naught; the Daedra take what they want, one way or another. Opening the Dwemer box that held the Oghma Infinium had secured her in the Prince's sights as his next Champion. She would rather die.  
It had been some time since she had any dealings with Hermaeus Mora, or any other Daedra for that matter, and she was quite content to keep it that way. She had no great love for most of the Daedra, and she did not consider herself a particularly devout woman to any pantheon. When the other Daedra had come calling, Lylenna paid them no mind as she had... larger dragons to fry. Alduin had to be dealt with. The dragon threat was her immediate concern, followed by the uprising of Ulfric Stormcloak and his band of Nords flocking to his cause like sheep. Small men bowed to the Thalmor, and despite all of Ulfric's puffing, Lylenna knew that the Thalmor had him under their thumb and exactly where they wanted him and would use his little coup as a foothold before they struck down the Empire.  
Glancing upward, she could see the faint shape of a dragon circling the high tower in the distance, but only allowed herself the slightest moment of envy at the dovah's graceful form, for who knew how long it had been imprisoned here with nothing but its own thoughts and the other dov to speak to. Lylenna tore her eyes away from the beast and instead settled her gaze upon the Black Book on the pedestal before her. It opened lazily, and she felt herself swept into the pages and into the next Chapter.


	2. She Onward Sped

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a little more than the prologue, hope you like it!
> 
> Songs for the chapter: Newgrange, Celtic Woman, pretty much any version; Salty Sailor by David Arkenstone

It would be a mere three moons before she found herself at Windhelm's gates after her last attempt to get Ulfric to agree to attending the peace talks. After his piggish and childish “No way in hell, woman. I do not take orders from the Empire or their errand-bitch,” she had stormed from the Palace of Kings and vowed to never return to that hateful, bleak city. Let him burn, then. Let the pigs squeal, if their leader chose to parlay with his citizens’ lives rather than attend a temporary peace talk then so be it. She was heading in the direction of the Windhelm’s Northern Maiden, directed by the note she lifted from the body of a Dunmeri cultist who had unwisely assaulted her on the road just north of Falkreath.  
Finding herself at the edge of the bridge, she heaved a heavy sigh and trudged through the slush toward the gates, each guard she passed muttering a quick acknowledgement of "Dragonborn" more out of standard social politeness than actual respect. She supposed that she preferred to be addressed as such, the alternative was usually "Hey You;" or "Reachman;" or perhaps worst of all, "My Lady". No, "Dragonborn" would do. Nodding to them as she passed, she was admitted to the city and spared no time making a direct line to the docks.  
As she descended the steps to the docks, the scowl on her face must have put out an air of agitation. All the poor dock workers scuttled out of her way, no matter if they were in her way or not. She rounded the turn onto the pier and all but stomped across the gangplank. An older Nord man, Gjalund, was overseeing the repairs to the mast of the ship and spun to face the sound of approaching footsteps. An assortment of emotions crossed his face when he saw just who it was stomping onto his ship.

"Ah, Dragonborn," he exclaimed somewhat warily, "What might I do for you?" Where the Dragonborn went, all sorts of bad seemed to follow in her wake, and Gjalund knew that for a fact. He didn't wish to try his luck with her reputation for disaster today.

Pulling the scarf down from her face, she shot a pointed look back towards the city, "You can take me far away from this shithole city, Captain." She pulled the scrap of parchment from her bag and held it for the befuddled man to see. "It was... suggested that I should NOT go to Solstheim, as it seems there is some trouble that people don't want the Dragonborn meddling in, and it is my sworn duty to meddle with trouble," she quipped. _Divines above know that nobody else would be trying to fix this_, she scoffed inwardly and rolled her eyes. If Gjalund saw, he made no indication.

Gjalund skimmed the note and blinked in surprise, and then his face became stony. "Sorry, I'm not going back to Solstheim," he shook his head a bit, as though clearing away a bad memory, "Things are getting real strange out there, barely made it out with my crew as it is, and the shipments are getting to be sparse." He wrought his hands together, and Lylenna noticed a lack of gloves upon them. 

Lylenna cocked her head to the side, folding up the letter once more, she stowed it back in her pack and withdrew a pouch of septims. Hefting it from one hand to the other, she gave the ship and its crew a once-over. "I'm more than prepared to pay for passage," she said, "Your ship needs repairs, and you and your crew look as though you need a hot meal or two." She held out the pouch to Gjalund, coins clinking together and drawing the wolfish gaze of the crew. He eyed the pouch with a clearly strained expression. Lylenna raised a brow, "I'll even let you keep the bag, made of the finest dragon skin by yours truly!" She gave the bag another shake that caused the coins to jingle quite musically. 

Gjalund huffed a short scoff. A quick glance at his hungry crew settled the deal. "Fine," he said, "We'll shove off at daybreak." Lylenna quirked her signature half-smile and handed the bag of coins over. She turned to debark the ship, but one look at those cold walls and she turned right back around. Gjalund was already dishing out the coin to his crewmates.

"Captain," she called after the man, "If it's alright, I think I'll stay on board this evening."

Casting her a curious look, the man shrugged and pointed at the cabin doors. "Suit yourself, Dragonborn, just don't cause any trouble." 

Lylenna grinned and pulled her scarf back over her face. She descended the stairs into the cabin hold and set her pack near a hammock. A touch of celestial calculation and she determined that she had about thirteen hours to wait before daybreak struck, so she pulled out a couple of books, a scroll of parchment and her quill, and the letter, searching for any mention of the strange name "Miraak" that she could find.

___________

Solstheim was nothing but ash and attitude. She could handle the attitude, which she had been bombarded with upon her arrival. The people there were hardy and truly resilient, and they quickly earned her respect. The people, on the other hand, were not so quick to warm up to Lylenna. They were not at all afraid to remind her that "This isn't Skyrim, this is Morrowind," and that she was an "outsider". She knew this to be true on both fronts. Still, she worked quickly to break whatever odd spell that was upon them, forcing them to work on the Standing Stones against their will and beyond their recollection. All evidence pointed to absolutely nothing, so she sought knowledge far from Raven Rock. Part of her search brought her to Saering's Watch, where luck seemed to be on her side;she could read the signs, it was a dragon roost and thankfully its tenant had been absent. She took the knowledge she gained at the Word Wall south. 

____________

Perhaps the most attitude came from the old Telvanni wizard, Neloth, at Tel Mithryn. By the Divines and the Daedra, this mer was ornery and stuck up to boot, but Lylenna seemed to have a soft spot for crotchety old men and listened to his very wise yet condescending stories with a look of bemusement. This time, he was telling her about the Black Books and how he had found one in a nearby Dwemer ruin. 

"Neloth, you know I'm not opposed to fetching things for you when I have the time, but what does a book of Hermaeus Mora's have to do with the Stones and Miraak? We cleared the nearby Stones, shouldn't that be enough to keep the people from Mora?" The Breton braced her hands on the spellcasting table, not at all ready or willing to deal with any more of that damn Daedra or his minions.

Neloth snorted indignantly, "Stupid girl! Hermaeus Mora has EVERYTHING to do with the Stones! You have seen the creatures that emerge when you cleanse the Stones. They are Lurkers, Mora's minions." He waved a hand dramatically, "You didn't know? Hmm, I thought it was obvious. Hermaeus Mora has always tried to seduce mortals into his service with the lure of forbidden knowledge.” Lylenna quirked an eyebrow, and opened her mouth to ask a question. Her question was cut short by the ever-preceptive mage, “Knowledge, girl, is power.Where the Black Books actually came from... no one really knows. Some appear to have been written in the past, others might be from the future. Apparently time is more malleable if you're a Daedric Prince of fate and destiny."

Lylenna let out a long breath and began to study the mycological ceiling, Daedra be damned, she was not looking forward to the prospect of having Mora’s slimy tentacles anywhere near her. She blinked and shuddered. Her gaze turned back to the elf, only to find him studying her with an intensity that she was not expecting, his hawkish glare boring scrutinous holes into her person while his arms were folded across his chest. Unsettled, she raised her brows and drew back.

“Neloth, what…?” She stammered a bit, highly displeased with the way her voice suddenly lost its presence.

“You seem more than apprehensive, certainly more than the fabled ‘Dragonborn of legend’ ought to be,” he rolled his eyes, “Pah, I should have expected so much, clearly you’ve never dealt with Daedra, they would likely deem you unworthy. Hermaeus Mora would never have any dealings with such a simple girl as you—”

“Hey!” she shot back and continued to speak over his indignant scowling, “For your information, ‘Master Neloth’, I have been hounded and pestered by every Prince that ever existed, Mora included! He seemed to think rather highly of me for having unlocked the Oghma Infinium.” His glare wavered between annoyance and intrigue, this Breton had quite the nerve to interrupt him. “I’ve dealt with him before, and I read the damn book,” she finished with a huff. Neloth’s annoyed expression now completely dissipated.

“Have you? The actual Oghma Infinium?” Lylenna scoffed at his sudden switch from condescending mer to intrigued scholar, but paid him no heed as at least now he was no longer berating her and deepening the scowl lines on his face. “That's... I've searched for it myself for many years without success...Well then, you should know that Hermaeus Mora is not one to be trifled with. But he is subtler than most of the other Daedric Princes, as you would expect of the prince of knowledge and fate. You seem to have escaped the fate of many who find themselves ensnared forever by the lure of his secrets,” he rambled, then added rather ominously: “Or... perhaps not."

“Just tell me where the Book is, Neloth.”


	3. Let's Never Do That Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slight Squick warning here, non-consensual invasive touching and a little bit of panic/PTSD. 
> 
> Please comment and critique so that I can improve! It is super appreciated!
> 
> No songs for this chapter. 
> 
> I'm taking some liberty with Neloth and Mora's dialogue, kind of splicing actual in-game dialogue and my own.

The intrepid pair of mages burst into the reading room, Neloth practically skipping with anticipation. Lylenna quickly bolted the door shut behind them for fear of any rogue automatons that might have survived the flooding ruins. They were high enough above the water line that she did not feel the need to seal the door with a ward as well. Whilst she was securing the door, Neloth pressed a button and the sound of ancient machinery ground to life, the glass centerpiece of the floor sliding away and the lectern with the cursed book rose to meet them. She sighed, grateful to be out of the ruins. She slid her mask off, and pulled her scarf down.

"Splendid, I daresay this is one of the greatest discoveries of my life!" The mer exclaimed in his usual conceited way, "now, we must proceed carefully! Hermaeus Mora's influence will likely cause you to go mad. I will be safe of course, not even the strongest of Daedra can influence me. And for the record--"

Lylenna could hear that Neloth was speaking, but the words that he spoke were far away and echoed as though he were in a cave. A heartbeat-like sound that she heard and an overwhelming presence she could feel eminated from the book upon the pedestal. It was a constant pulsing thrum, and it was far louder than she would have liked it to be. The feeling of being pulled toward the pages made her mind cry out in opposition, but her feet and her hands moved of their own accord. She could see the book so close and also so very, very far away and her arms and legs were leaden. The thrumming became louder, and her **dovahsos** recoiled within her as her fingers finally made contact with the cover. It felt like the stars and the magic that she was so used to holding in her hands; the ethereal and unnatural material defying the laws of Mundus at the touch of her hand. 

The book slammed open and revealed its swirling text, Daedric and evil and from the center crease of the book spewed forth the familiar inky green and slimy tentacles of Hermaeus Mora. Lylenna could only continue to stand transfixed by the book's spell as the tentacles snaked around her neck and torso. One final twist and the last tentacle wrapped itself around her still outstretched hand and before Neloth could bring himself out of his oh-so-self-important monologue, Lylenna blacked out and remembered nothing else but the void. 

And it was dark.

It was heavy.

And then suddenly, the feeling of solid ground beneath her roused her from the darkness. Lylenna forced her arms beneath her, feeling as though they weighed as much as Giants’ clubs and were just as dexterous. Blinking the stinging pain from her eyes, she stumbled to her feet and readied a shock spell in each hand. Her breathing and the slightly musical hum of her spell was nearly deafening as she began to panic. What _is_ this place? She spun round, frantically searching for any sort of familiarity in the alien landscape of rotting books, strange arches, and dark seas of shining liquid.

Unfortunately, the only familiar thing to be found was the milky yellow eyes and slick green tentacles of her least favorite entity. Mora was FAR too close and she tried to shriek but was silenced by the horrible feeling of a tentacle plunging into her mouth.

_ Gods, no, please not this! _She froze, spells dying in her hands and her mind becoming both too loud and absolutely silent at the same time. _No, no, NO!_

“I know you, Champion,” came the dripping voice she so hated, “The Oghma Infinium was only the beginning.” The appendage in her mouth twitched and she fought every fiber of her being to _stay still don’t move don’t make him angry. _Another tentacle slowly wound its way around and up her legs. The prince chuckled, the sound like a retching demon in her ears. “This is Apocrypha, where all knowledge is hoarded. Welcome, my Champion.”

Stars danced in her vision, blotting out the Daedric monstrosity briefly before he ripped the tentacle from her throat and from her legs, causing her to fall to her knees. She sucked in a desperate breath, coughing and spitting up vile, dark fluid. She dared not look up at Mora. _Go away please go away fuck off! _Hot tears streamed down her face and her entire being trembled. Mora laughed again, the horrid sound seemingly coming from everywhere.

“Read your Black Book again if you tire of your search, and perhaps I shall permit you to return to the mortal world, my Champion,” he drawled before dissipating into the putrid green sky. Lylenna curled her arms around herself and pressed her forehead to her knees, fingernails nearly biting through the leather of her gloves. There she sat, and she hadn’t the slightest idea how long she had stayed there but the way her legs had gone numb was a pretty good indicator that it had been quite some time.

She knew she had to get out, but getting _out _meant going further _in_ and she _hated_ that.

“Get a grip, Lenna. Get a grip,” she whispered. Her voice, though it was but a whisper, bounced off the walls as though it had been a Shout. _Outstanding._ Stealth it would have to be, then. She breathed deeply, counting her heartbeats to ten and then breathing again. The leather of her gloves creaked as she unclenched her fists to summon a whispering muffle spell and an invisibility spell soon followed. Off she shuffled, deeper into the heart of this Chapter of Apocrypha.

Neloth had been next to no help when she finally was flung from Oblivion, bruised and bloodied and far more shaken than she had been in recent memory. The image of pale blue eyes and a maw of razor-sharp fangs that towered eight feet over her head was still fresh in her mind and Neloth had the nerve to pester her about—just what was he bothering her about? Her ears were ringing from where a lurker tentacle had gotten a good hit over her ears. Instead of helping her from the floor, Neloth whipped out his journal and quill and was frantically taking observations. Her healing spell was weaker than she wanted it to be, but then again, SHE was weaker than she wanted to be at the moment, but it at least took the edge off of the cuts and brought the ringing down to a more manageable volume. She glared up at him.

“Subject appears to be affected by some sort of fury spell,” he intoned as he scribbled. _Fury spell? I’ll show you a fury spell. _“Unresponsive to speech, incapacitated,” he stooped down and took her face in his hand.

Lylenna jerked her head away from him with a snarl. “Don’t fucking touch me!” Neloth arched a brow and looked as though he had been slapped. The ebony ring on her right thumb sprung forth into her staff, which she leaned heavily on to pull herself to her feet. He met her glaring gaze and she thought she saw just a sliver of concern cross his sharp features before she limped past him. “I’m going back to Raven Rock,” she huffed.

“Nonsense, Tel Mithryn is much closer!”

“Neloth, I cannot even begin to explain to you how much I don’t want to be anywhere near you right now.” She had been unprepared for Apocrypha, and it had nearly gotten to her. She pressed her hand to the heavy metal doors and pushed with all of her remaining strength, but the door stood fast and coldly mocked her with its silent immovability. _Damnit._ Her fist thumped lamely against the metal. A hand on her shoulder caused her to start, “Nel, please do not touch me,” she repeated, though with significantly less fire.

The hand retreated from her shoulder and moved to the door, which yielded to the Dunmer. The sun had long since set, and the ash clouds were thick enough to cover the moons. “Lylenna,” the elder mage said, “Don’t be a fool, you’re in no state to travel all the way back to Raven Rock. Come, Talvas will see to you.” She hated to admit it but the insufferable mer was right, so she hobbled along after him into the night. He set a brisk pace that she struggled a bit to match, every so often stopping so that she could catch her breath and cast a healing spell. Gods, breathing hurt. It wasn't until their third reprieve that one of her ribs popped back into place. Neloth stood there looking like one of the burnt-up tree stumps and was just about as useful. Apparently _helping others_ was not in his vocabulary. Finally, the towering mushrooms of Tel Mithryn were silhouetted against the paling sky, the sun beginning to rise to the east. Lylenna wanted to cry tears of pure happiness when she was ushered to the softest looking bed in the place; she accepted the bed and tumbled into it without hesitation, not bothering to remove her robes or her boots much to the alchemist Elynea's dismay. Divines and Daedra, sleep was all she wanted, and she was out within a minute of falling onto the mattress. 


	4. A Bridge, or Perhaps Not

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song: "The Bridge of Khazad-Dum" originally by Howard Shore, but the version I have specifically is Eurielle's. Seriously good stuff that is quite truly otherworldly good.
> 
> Dovahzul is translated at the end!

When he had first heard the singing, he had though that he was finally losing his mind. By his calculation, he had been trapped in Apocrypha for four thousand, three hundred and thirty-seven years without his mind breaking, but one day a sound so distant and quiet that he had almost not heard it at all echoed in his mind. It had been just a whisper of a sound, slipping past him like a gossamer breeze, but it had frozen him in his tracks nonetheless. He hadn't imagined it, he was sure. 

The second time he heard it, he had searched the immediate area for its source and had found nothing but the usual seekers and lurkers, who paid him no mind as they always had. This time the song was just a little louder and lasted just a bit longer. He couldn't make out words, only the melody floating through his head. He had tried to continue about his business, but the singing had him stopping every so often to listen, to see if it was just a whistling of the tepid wind or the rustling of some parchment. He hadn't kept track of how long it had been between this time and the first, perhaps he would this time.

Upon hearing the singing for the third time, he took to the skies and searched all of Apocrypha. Sahrotaar, nor the other two dov had heard anything at all and had questioned him about this voice. He had been insistent that they all searched for the source. The song was getting louder, he was sure of it. It would come and go, each time growing louder or closer, or perhaps he was just falling farther into madness. He did not wish to entertain this idea, and shoved it to the farthest corner of his mind. Though the singing had gotten louder over time, it was never TOO loud. It did not overpower his thoughts, nor was it ever unpleasant. It was a high, silvery voice that he could only describe as ethereal; a voice like the ringing of a bell. He continued to hear the singing on and off for sixteen, perhaps seventeen years he couldn't say for sure. Dii Lovaas, he had taken to calling it in this time. 

Then one day, the voice cried a long, keening note that rattled him to the bone, leaving him feeling powerfully grieved, like the sound had carried all of the sorrow of a lifetime and had forced it into him. He had clapped his hands over his ears if only to _make it STOP_ but it did nothing to stifle the cry. Just when he thought he couldn't take it anymore, that the sound would split him in two or drive him mad, the voice abruptly ceased, leaving his ears ringing in the sudden silence.

He did not hear the voice again. He began to miss the sound, the song that had been before it had nearly sundered him. The singing had been soothing, in a way. Like a bridge back to Mundus, it had given him the chance to hear a new voice, and to hear music once more. It had been something of a companion, and when he could hear it he had felt less alone. He wondered what had happened to make the voice cry out and cease, surely a disembodied voice couldn't be dead? The thought of that left a weight in his chest and a bad taste in his mouth.

He waited. Weeks, months, and then years. Nothing. He desperately began to seek the sound once more, praying to whatever deity could hear him to _bring it back_. He had even dared to sing the melody out loud one day, just to see if there would be an answer. Only the sounds of Apocrypha and his own thoughts were heard, and he was alone once again. 

__________________________________________ 

He had FINALLY found a way, the hole in the fabric of Oblivion through which he could slip and be free, and he had set his plan in action. The All-Maker Stones held more power than the Skaal truly knew, but what they knew of the stones was of no matter to him so long as his spell worked to control their minds. He had known of the Stones for two centuries at least, but the spell necessary to alter the minds of the people beyond the plane had taken just as long to figure out and was now ready to prepare.

Miraak leaned back against the desk, thumbing one of the long tendrils of his mask absently. He would need to prepare the necessary components to the spell. With Mora constantly watching, he would need to be stealthy and quick about it but he was sure that it would take quite some time to get the spell right. He had one last shot at freedom, and he would be damned if he lost it all now. if he had to wait a few more years, then so be it. He ground his teeth together, shifted his weight from foot to foot, and pushed off of the desk. The sound of his footsteps and the rustling of pages was nothing new to him, and nor was the soft sound of a song in his ears for just a moment. He stopped dead in his tracks, hands clenching to tight fists. _There is no way_, he thought, _I must have imagined that_. Though he tried to dismiss it as a figment of his imagination, he couldn’t suppress the way the song made his heart skip a beat and the briefest flash of childish joy consume him. It had been almost fifteen years since he had heard that sound.

Miraak stood still and held his breath, silently praying that he was wrong and that he hadn’t imagined the sound. He stood for what felt like eternity, searching the pages rustling before him for any sign of magic deceit. When he heard nothing, he gritted his teeth and swallowed the disappointment that had begun to gnaw at his chest.

_Please_, he thought, _keep singing_. He closed his eyes and focused on the memory of the ethereal melody, feeling his dovahsos surge like fire, drawn to whatever this song was emanating from.

Then, as if on cue, the sound returned to answer his call and this time he knew he was not imagining it. And this time he let himself smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dii Lovaas: My song  
Dovahsos: dragon soul


	5. A Meeting, Not By Chance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I started writing this chapter with the intent of using more of Frea's in-game dialogue, but she somehow got away from me and evolved into this really dense and clueless character. I actually really like game Frea! I promise! I just think that Lylenna would find her really annoying and /I low-key had a glitch in my latest Dragonborn play-through where she literally did NOTHING and I had to fus her through some parts of the dungeon because she wasn't firing on all scripts somehow, so here's my interpretation of that./
> 
> Anyhoo, skipping the extra fluff bits of the quests, getting to the main two. Like I said I want this to be a longer fic but not, like, a jumbo sized one.  
The way magic is so limited in game is lame, so I am going to be tailoring everyone's magic to a more personal style. I also just recently finished a DA:I playthrough, and Lylenna uses her magic and her staff much like a mage of Thedas. 
> 
> Please comment at me, comment all the things! I was a lurker on this site for so long before I realized that anonymous can comment too!

Frea, for all of her bold talk and brash actions, was one of the most cowardly people that Lylenna had ever had the misfortune of pairing with to achieve a goal. All she spoke of was how she wished to “save her people from great evil,” and yet it was Lylenna who was doing all of the great-evil-vanquishing while the Skaal woman twisted Lylenna’s actions into her own accomplishments. At the Tree Stone, she had uselessly, and rather loudly, begged the charmed people to cease their toil and had actually _blamed_ Lylenna for their state. Then, Frea stood by “protecting her people” as the Lylenna took out the emerging cultists on her own and had the audacity to claim that the pair “made a pretty good team.”

Two thirds of the way into the depths of the temple, Lylenna rounded a bend past an oddly familiar shaped statue and directly into the biggest hulking draugr she had ever laid eyes on, shouted it back into a lit brazier, and immolated it with a blast of lightning that had lit up the entire hallway. Frea had stayed a ways back, clearly not interested in braving the attacking demon. Lylenna’s quite extensive patience finally snapped when Frea had poked the ashen remains and said “I have never killed a draugr as wicked and vile as this! All-Maker praise me this day.” Lylenna had whirled around, grabbed the much taller woman’s stahlrim collar, yanked her down to eye level, and silenced her with a venomous glare. Frea said blessed little the rest of the way into the temple.

Finally, after what seemed like _days_, Lylenna could hear the heartbeat-like thrum and felt a tugging at her very being that indicated a Black Book was nearby. This was her task, but she took no delight in this discovery like she would if it were any _normal_ ancient text unearthed for the first time in who-knew-how-long. How her heart had raced when she found the works of Shalidor for Urag gro-Shub at Winterhold, how her spirit soared when she lifted the ancient Falmer texts free of the snowy Vale, how her mind went haywire with excitement when she had any of the Elder Scrolls in her hands. No, the Black Books only made her heart hammer with fear. The evil thing sat upon a pedestal statue, the grotesque entity that it was needed an equally horrifying display.

“We should not touch that thing, it is evil,” Frea so helpfully observed. Lylenna found it in her power to roll her eyes despite the draw that the book had upon her. Just as when she had first touched a Black Book in Nchardak, this one too felt like unnatural magic and not quite there when her fingers brushed the cover. It folded open, almost welcoming, as once again Lylenna choked on her terror deep within her body that moved of its own accord when Mora’s tentacles dragged her back into Apocrypha.

The nauseating feeling of being sucked into another plane of existence was accompanied by an abrupt stop that nearly made her hurl. She could feel the slightly springy floor of paper beneath her back, and she flung her arm over her mask to keep it in place should any tentacles try to pry beneath it. To her surprise, a familiar baritone and almost metallic voice spoke: “The time comes soon when—”

She sensed not one, but _four_ powerful dovah souls near her, and all nausea was replaced with adrenaline as she leaped to her feet, a ward spell half charged around her. Her blurred vision quickly cleared, and she had just mere moments to take in the sight of three large dragons flying low overhead, one of which landed on the platform with a quaking thud; four horrid seekers chuttering and floating nearby; and a tall, broad man in green robes who whirled around to face her. Miraak.

“What?” The word was punctuated by a quick and sharp shock spell that halfway bounced off her half-formed ward, shattering the shimmering shield. It was succeeded with another shock that came too quickly to dodge. Lylenna darted her hand out and absorbed the spell as a metal spike on a roof would a bolt of lightning. She closed her enchanted palm around the sparking spell, letting it fizzle and smoke itself out before holding both hands up in an attempt to cease fire.

The man paused, and Lylenna shifted into a less offensive stance, never taking her eyes off of him. The golden mask he wore was reminiscent of the masks she had seen the undead dragon priests of old wearing when she had to clear out their tombs. Not unlike her own ebony mask. His was more helm-like, and with long tendrils like the faces of the seekers that were floating into formation behind him.

“Who are you to dare set foot here?” he asked but did not wait for her to reply before continuing. “Ahh, you are Dragonborn. I can feel it. You have slain many dragons I see, and yet…” He paused, head tilting slightly. Lylenna felt her dovahsos surge within her at his words, not quite a challenge nor a threat but still unnerving. Miraak’s posture righted itself as if he could sense her agitation. “You have no idea of the true power a Dragonborn can wield,” he barked. There was a moment where Lylenna thought she felt a tug in her chest before the man uttered a Shout she had never heard before:

“_MUL QAH DIIV”_

Spectral draconic armor swirled into being, cresting his head with four pointing horns and donning his torso and arms with glowing translucent plates of blue and gold light. Lylenna blinked and her lips parted in surprise, and she was glad for her own mask as she realized she should _not_ be as intrigued by this enemy’s Shout as she was and that her expression would give him ammunition against her.

“This realm is beyond you. You have no power here,” he continued, “and it is only a matter of time before Solstheim is also mine. I already control the minds of its people.” He took a step towards her, hands folding behind his back. He tipped his head back slightly, but Lylenna could not see his eyes behind his mask as he peered down at her. “Soon they will finish my temple, and I can return home.” It was Lylenna’s turn to tilt her head, and she opened her mouth to question him. He turned his back to her and nonchalantly strode away from her. “She can await my arrival with the rest of Tamriel.” On his orders, the seekers closed in before she could eek out anything more that a stammered “_wait_”, blasting her with their strange paralyzing green magic. It made her head spin and her vision darken, and her legs felt like all of the bones in them had been turned to water. The last thing she saw was Miraak mounting the dragon’s neck and the two taking off into the abyssal sky before the seekers’ magic laid her low.

She awoke back in the dark and musty temple, with Frea hovering near her. Lylenna groaned and gripped the pedestal to steady herself. She really hated the feeling of being thrown around between Apocrypha and Mundus.

“What happened to you?” The blonde asked. “You read the book and then…it seemed as though you were not really here. I could see you, but also see _through_ you!”

“Ah, well, I was taken to Apocrypha. I saw Miraak and his dragons—”

“Where? Can we reach him? Can we kill him?”

Lylenna pressed her finger and thumb to her closed eyes and rubbed them. She pushed the mask up under her hood and eyed the Skaal. “He is in _Apocrypha_; reading these books takes one there; and I assume that one could kill him, yes.” Frea needed blunt explanations, apparently.

Frea brought her hand to her chin and thought for a moment. Lylenna could almost see the thoughts flickering through her head.

“This is a dangerous thing, then. We should return to my village and show this to my father. Perhaps Storn can make sense of what is going on.” As much as Lylenna didn’t want to admit it, she had a point. Before she could agree, Frea had already made a beeline for the carved wrought-iron doors across the room and was busy shoving the time-worn things open.


	6. Near, Far, Been There.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hoo boy, action is hard to write. Some blood in this chapter!  
Also, my practical interpretation of the map-marker function!
> 
> Lylenna is a medium-armored battle mage. I will get around to describing what she wears because its not a canon set of armor. Maybe include a picture, I don't know. Should I?

Dragon. What better way to be roused from one’s bed roll? Lylenna swore and wrestled her way out of her tent, the flaps flying back behind her as a great dovah swooped low over her small, inconspicuous camp. She doubted it had seen her, she was tucked back into an alcove against the stone, but she knew it could sense her. _This is what I get for not hiring that mercenary! Solo battling another dragon._ She was somewhere between the Skaal village on the eastern side of the island and the Wind Stone, just before where the spriggans gathered at the head of the Harstrad river. Still far enough away from any potential dragon territories that she knew the dragon’s circling was purposeful. The dragon wheeled once, twice, then meandered off beyond the mountain, its slow and leisurely flight a blatant challenge.

“It must be the one I missed roosting at Saering’s Watch,” she muttered, shrugging on her cloak and pulling the hood up over her head. No sense in going back to sleep now with a dragon actively patrolling the skies. Divines, did she detest killing the dragons. Too many times she had tried to reason with a dovah only to have to hear it shriek in anguish when she devoured its soul. She had never heard such a sound of fear and pain. Weighing her options as she broke camp, she decided that the Skaal village was not going anywhere any time soon and the dragon was the more immediate threat. Storn and the others could wait for her return just a little while longer. She knelt down, and with her finger drew a sigil in the snow: One long vertical line, a dot, and then a shorter vertical line, surrounded by a circle and a six-pointed star. Almost immediately, it began to glow, and a wispy spot of light appeared on the horizon in the direction she needed to go. With her clairvoyance spell complete and camp broken down, she began trudging through the snow to follow the light.

Storn had sent her out to Saering’s Watch with the task of learning the Word of the Shout needed to cleanse the Stones. Thankfully, she had already visited the ruin and discovered the word not three weeks prior. Storn’s second task was to cleanse the All-Maker Stones around the island, beginning with the Wind Stone that held his people bewitched. She had cleared the Earth, Sun, and Beast stone shortly after her first visit to Saering’s Watch with Neloth’s “help,” and the Wind Stone just this evening. Mora had bestowed upon her the second Word when she had reached the end of her first trip into his hellish realm. She was becoming a bit of a veteran with Mora’s creatures and Miraak’s stone-spell. Lylenna was beginning to tire of the ugly things but could not refuse to help, it wasn’t in her nature. “Len, sometimes you have to just say no,” she chattered to herself over the sound of the chilling breeze that swept through the night. “No, the famous Dragonborn will not be meddling today. Nope.” She sighed. That would never be true.

It was at the break of dawn when she finally crested the ridge, the frost trolls that she had made short work of last time thankfully hadn’t had any friends move in and she was allowed to sneak unbothered. Her boots left footprints and her breath plumed from beneath her mask and scarf, but that was the only sign she was there. Lylenna peered around the corner and saw a large, slate gray beast perched upon the once-empty wall that she had visited not three weeks ago. It had no horns, an underbite that made even one of Ulfric’s stone-headed officers look as intelligent as the arch-curate, and sickly yellow eyes that immediately met hers, breaking her invisibility spell. It was the same kind of dragon that Miraak had ridden atop in Apocrypha. She pulled her head back behind the stone as a blast of flame melted the snow just beyond it. _There is to be no negotiation, it seems. Again._

She sucked in a deep breath, clenching and unclenching her fists. A low, resonant note rang out as her lightning spells sparked in each hand. The dragon launched itself off of the wall, nearly knocking the ancient thing over in the process. It charged headlong at the stone she was hiding behind.

_ "FEIM!” _ Her thu’um was clear like a bell, ringing off the stone of the mountains as the dovah barreled through the stone arch and through her spectral form, sending rock cascading back down the path. It came crashing down with the stone, and with surprising speed was up on its feet again. Lylenna sprinted to the next cover she could see: a stone hut. She slid into the doorway and planted her feet, spells ready, just as her thu’um wore off. The dovah roared and took back to the sky, this time soaring high above and out of range. It looped and began plummeting back to the earth, gaining speed. _Shit, it’s an aerial fighter, _she thought, _Need to bring it down_. Her throat was still tight from her last shout, she would have to time this dive perfectly to avoid getting ripped apart. She had no more time to think, the dovah was on top of her, its massive crooked jaws open wide and ugly talons outstretched. Lylenna leaped forward and rolled under the talons as the dragon smashed the hut to bits with its heavy tail, clipping her shoulder in the process and throwing her off balance. She had little time to regain her footing as the thing wheeled about again, ready for a third diving attack.

The pressure in her throat faded away, and she drew a breath in. _Breath and focus._

_ "JOOR ZAH FRUL!"_

While her first Shout had been a resonating ring, this was a terrible note. It was befitting for a Shout as fundamentally wrong as Dragonrend.

The dragon howled as her thu’um collided with it with enough force to stagger the beast mid-flight, and it dropped like a stone to the snow. Charging her spells once more, Lylenna flew toward the beast and unleashed a barrage of shock spells that danced and arced through the air with a crackle and a sharp tang of ozone. They hit the dragon’s leathery hide and lit up its great veins with a bright white glow. The dragon screeched, swinging its massive head around to face her. It was all gnarly teeth and black gums and _fire_ as it roared its blazing Shout at her. She brought her forearms together with a sharp snap of armored bone, metal, and leather and braced herself behind her ward. The flames flared out in all directions like a sun as they collided with the magical barrier, tendrils melting the snow in great plumes of steam. Lylenna’s feet left trails in the slush as she was pushed back with the force of the blast. She threw her arms out to her sides, breaking the ward and throwing the last of the flames with it and charged forward through the cloud of steam.

From her thumb sprang her staff once more, and she channeled a strong shock spell into the metal. It vibrated and sung like a tuning rod with the pulsing charge of the spell that she focused out to the bladed base. Twirling it masterfully, she slashed at the dragon’s open maw and felt the short blade tear into the soft flesh of its gums, felt the spray of blood hit her robes, and heard it howl. She spun the staff again and delivered another charged strike to the softer scales beneath its eye, then sidestepped as it swung its head like a club with a snap of its jaws. It reared its head back, and seeing her opening Lylenna braced her staff before her like a spear and called her thu’um:

_ "WULD!"_

Like the very wind she had summoned, she flew forward, feet never touching the ground and drove the bladed staff deep into the creature’s neck between the muscles and into its heart. Blood sprayed and gushed around the spear with a sickening squelch, splattering into the snow and dripping wet warmth over her torso and nearly soaking her entirely. With one final twist of her staff, the dragon gave an agonized roar and crumpled to the ground.

She was always mystified by the way the flesh dissipated from a dovah’s bones; this time was no exception. She felt the flesh give way around her staff. Planting it firmly, she leaned upon it as she caught her breath. She bowed her head, pressing it to the intricately inscribed metal collar below the mounted gem at the top. The flesh and the copious pools of blood burned away with a shimmering of magic, leaving her clean of all blood save for her own. She felt her injured shoulder twinge.

“Great nameless Dovah, forgive me for my actions. May your soul finally be at rest when I too pass from the mortal plane.” She intoned this blessing to every dovah she had slain and hoped that the flow of time was true that when she died, their souls could return to…wherever they came from.

The glowing rush of the dovahsos flickered and swirled around her, making her skin tingle and her head spin as it always did. She wavered on her feet, willing the soul to move quickly, when the feeling abruptly ceased, and she felt the soul pull directly through her chest. It—hurt? No, it did not hurt but it was not a comfortable feeling and nor was it the norm for a dragon soul to pass right through her. She was glad for the staff’s support as the feeling finally retreated along with the last of the soul, making her sway like a ship on the high sea. A prickling feeling of being watched made her turn, but she saw nothing, save for a pair of faint footprints in the snow a few feet away. Still, a presence lingered in her periphery. 

"This dragon's soul belongs to me," came his voice behind her. She spun around and there, shimmering faintly as the morning sun blazed through his nearly-transparent form, was Miraak. The glowing of the dovasos was still twirling around him as it faded out. "One step closer to my return." And again before Lylenna had a chance to speak, he was gone. 


	7. I Will Not Break.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HEY WARNING! RAPE in this chapter! Please skip if it bothers you, I one hundred percent understand! Mora knows. He has always known, but still he torments his mortal champion for amusement.
> 
> This chapter is from Miraak's perspective, and is set just before Lylenna reads the book in Nchardak. I'm still not sure how I want to structure Miraak's perspective chapters. He always seems to be behind the times, but I suppose that's fitting for him in a way. We all know he catches up to the present. ;p

He had thrown everything from atop his desk with rage when he first sensed the cleansing of a few of the All-Maker stones. He had flung his carefully organized notes, his delicate inkwells and quill, and his books to the paper floor and would have thrown the desk itself over the side of the platform and into the inky abyss below if he could have. Instead, he braced his knuckles on the surface, hunched over the desk and glaring at the well-worn wood. The Earth and Sun Stones were lost, the spell broken upon them.

He was _so_ close. The remaining stones would have to be enough, but who or whatever was interfering with his plan would have to be eliminated. He stormed away from the desk, kicking shards of glass away. _Nothing on Nirn should be able to touch the stones, _he thought, _My spell is not of that world. No one of that world can manipulate it!_ He paced around his “study,” the platform he had claimed as such many millennia ago. The singing had grown far louder of late and it was becoming more difficult to focus despite him being used to the song in his head.

He was so deep in thought and so focused on wearing a path into the floor with his unrelenting pace that he failed to notice the wretched abyss that had begun to materialize in the middle of the platform. Eyes and tentacles and grotesque horror birthed itself from the void without a sound. Mora watched his Champion stride back and forth across the mess he had made. Miraak glowering at his boots, his arms folded behind his back; Mora found it quite…boring.

“My Champion,” he drawled. Miraak froze and whipped his head towards the sound. _No, this cannot be—_panic gnawed at his heart with icy fangs. One of Mora’s innumerable tentacles coiled around his waist, its tapered tip lazily working its way to his mask. All he could do was hold still as a statue as Mora tipped the metal off his face along with his hood. “You look…weary. Perhaps you need something to…distract you.” Miraak couldn’t suppress the chill of fear that shivered down his spine at the Prince’s dark tone. He knew that tone. Mora was bored. When Mora got bored, Miraak became his toy. His face remained impassive; he had learned how to not show his emotions after the first handful of times that Mora decided to have his way with him.

More tentacles joined the first, caressing his jaw, his chest, and downward. Mora’s one main eye drew closer to Miraak, taking in the sight of the helplessly tied man who dared not move. The Prince found his Champion’s lack of reaction amusing, as this was always how his mortal servant began before he reduced the man to a hollow shell. With a flick of a tentacle, Miraak’s clothes disappeared form him and reappeared in a heap atop his desk.

“Did you think I would not take notice of your…behavior, Miraak?” One tentacle was uncomfortably close to his member, hovering just slightly above him, waiting for an answer.

“No. There is no hiding from you.” Miraak said flatly.

“Then why,” the tentacle around his waist throbbed and coiled tighter, “do you act so…hmm…restless? Tell me.”

“It is the singing.” Miraak lied. Mora barked a laugh and lifted Miraak from the platform, stringing him up by his wrists.

“The singing.” Mora repeated. “The song that you want so _desperately_ to be for you alone is what is causing _this_? I think…” a tentacle wrapped around the base of his cock and squeezed. Miraak clenched his jaw in pain but made no sound. “…you’re _lying._” Mora growled.

Miraak did indeed want the song. He willed it to sing louder in this moment to drown out everything else. Hung like he was nothing more than an object from Mora’s grasp, subject to the Prince’s will, he wanted so badly for the sound to be as loud as it had been when it had nearly deafened him all those years ago. He would die before he told Mora the truth. He stared straight ahead, through the mass of tentacles and eyes. He did not speak.

Mora began his torturous game, tentacles probing and prodding and twisting around his mortal, penetrating deep and with purpose. The man’s will would break. Miraak disengaged from everything when Mora came to torture him, he had no sense of time nor reason. He simply ground his teeth together and focused on the singing. He may have had no concept of time, but this particular session seemed to end rather soon for what he was used to. Mora pulled out and dropped him unceremoniously to the floor, a shell of a person in a heap before him.

“It seems I have matters more…important than you to attend to at the moment,” droned the Prince. Miraak did not look up from the floor. “Remember, my Champion, you cannot escape me.” With that final word, Mora disappeared off to some other part of Apocrypha, Miraak did not care as long as it wasn’t right there torturing him. The trance began to wear off, and he had the feeling begin to return to his body. Everything hurt. The singing had faded, but he still felt its presence. He staggered to his feet and to his desk, yanking the pile of clothes down. His mask clattered to the floor and stared up at him with its cold, expressionless eye slits.

Slowly, he redressed himself, his mask the last thing he picked up from the floor. He turned it in his hands, running his now gloved fingers over the metal. It, like him, had scars across the right side of its surface. It was a mark of magical fusion, where it had been repaired many, many centuries ago. He shook his head, squared his shoulders, and replaced his mask over his face. He had work to do. He would escape Mora. He would go _home_, or die trying. 


	8. A Meeting, Not By Chance (Alternate)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who left kudos! It makes me feel like I'm doing at least an okay job so far!
> 
> Let's bring Miraak up to speed with the rest of the story now, I think he's had enough time being one step behind.

Sahrotaar was loyal; the dovah had once been Miraak’s second in command. Now he was reduced to the edge of madness beneath the yoke of Miraak’s Bend Will shout. Miraak had wielded the Shout like a cleaver, for it was once the very thing that made the dov fear him. Without this Shout, Sahrotaar, Kruziikrel, and Relonikiv would have fared no better than Numinex had when King Olaf trapped him in Dragonsreach. Miraak considered it a mercy, bending them to his will and service rather than letting them fall prey to madness; after his own imprisonment in Apocrypha for nearly five thousand years, with Mora constantly twisting and manipulating him, Miraak’s greatest fear was that of his own will being broken. It was all that he had left of himself.

Mora also used physical torture to try to break him, the most recent attempt had become a smeared half-memory. Still, he rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck to ease the soreness of having been hung by his arms for who knows how long. He was glad that he could resist the physical torture, it was easier than repelling the timeless and powerful magic that Mora wove into the very fiber of reality in Apocrypha. Physical pain heals faster than mental pain. The singing had returned not long after Mora had vanished, as well. He took strength in the feeling that whatever this was it had not abandoned him again.

The irony of him using the same magic that Mora used to try to control him on the minds of the people of Solstheim was not lost on him; when he returned, he would, in some way, attempt to make it up to them. They were nobody to him, nothing but a means to an end but no soul deserved to be a pawn of another against his will. He would release the dragons from his control as well, they most of all deserved better. He turned his gaze skyward, watching the three carve lazy circles around the platform above him. A few seekers approached him, each bearing new scripts and scraps of knowledge for him to read.

He collected the texts and tucked them into a pocket in his robes. He raised a hand, beckoning for Sahrotaar, who wheeled down to meet him obediently.

“The time comes soon when—” he began to muse as Sahrotaar touched down. He stopped when he felt a tug within his chest, a pulling draw that seemed to say _turn around_. He sensed a weighty presence, not of Mora, had drawn near. “What…?” He spun round and standing in a lopsided battle stance at the other side of the platform was a figure. The telltale shimmering of a ward began to form just as Miraak loosed a stun spell. It ricocheted off the magic and disrupted the barrier, and before the person could recover, he fired off another shock.

To his surprise, the figure extended a hand and _caught_ his spell. He stood mouth slightly agape but thankfully hidden behind his mask as the figure closed their fist around the bluish-purple magic. The spell fizzled out with a slight crackling, tiny sparks and smoke jumping from the now-upturned palms.

The figure shifted and held up their hands in a placating gesture of truce. He studied this person: small, no doubt only reaching mid-chest on him, with narrow shoulders and bulkier legs. _A woman? _He assumed so, the figure’s hips were wide. She wore deep gray robes trimmed with gold and purple over an ebony breastplate adorned with vine-like silver, her hood pulled up over a matching mask that bore striking resemblance to the masks of his ancient colleagues. Her gauntlet-clad hands shook ever so slightly.

“Who are you to dare set foot here?” He felt the pulling sensation again within him, and his dovahsos _roared _the answer. She could not possibly be…but she was. _Laat Dovahkiin_, the realization struck him. “Ahh, you are Dragonborn. I can feel it. You have slain many dragons I see, and yet…” He couldn’t deny his intrigue; here, before him in this realm, was not only another living mortal, but the prophesized Laat Dovahkiin. How had she come to be here? Her shoulders drew back a bit, and he sensed a bit of offense at his words in that slight movement. Still, he stood just a little straighter. If this was to be his most worthy opponent, he wished to make a grand first impression.

Again, he studied the woman. The arrival of the Laat Dovahkiin could not be coincidental to the Stones being cleansed, he was sure of that. So, this is who has been causing his plans to falter. Caught somewhere between rage and disbelieving amusement, he huffed a short laugh. _This_ is what was causing so much of his troubles? _Laat Dovahkiin, you know not what you have begun,_ he thought. _You cannot stand in my way._

“You have no idea the true power a Dragonborn can wield.” He didn’t bother concealing how unimpressed he was with this tiny interloper, and he felt a twinge of satisfaction when the woman drew herself even higher at his flippant yet biting tone. Her hands had fallen from truce and began closing into fists by her side. _How quaint. _Fine, if she thought herself equal to him, he would show her otherwise.

“_MUL QAH DIIV!” _

The way this Shout heightened his senses never failed to send him reeling, the rush of adrenaline made his heart race and he felt as if he were seeing the world as only a dovah could. Beyond the glow, it was she who looked suddenly fascinated with her tilted head and leaned-in stance. “This realm is beyond you. You have no power here,” he continued, “and it is only a matter of time before Solstheim is also mine. I already control the minds of its people.” Miraak took a single step forward, sneering down at her from behind his mask. “Soon they will finish my temple, and I can return home.”

Sahrotaar rumbled behind him and turning on his heel he left the Laat Dovahkiin standing transfixed on the spot. He glanced back over his shoulder, as if to challenge her to move at him. _Just try, Mal Dovahkiin,_ he growled to himself but couldn’t stop the smug smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “She can await my arrival with the rest of Tamriel.”

The seekers advanced like glaciers: slowly but with unstoppable energy. Behind him, he heard the quickest “_wait_” before all that could be heard was the rustling-paper sound of the seekers’ magic droning in waves and the ringing song in his ears. He swung himself up between the gaps in Sahrotaar’s spine and watched with a smirk as the woman fell to her knees within the onslaught of the seekers’ drain spells. Sahrotaar launched himself from the platform, and the sight below him faded to deep putrid green as the two soared higher and higher.


	9. Winter's Day Walk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Songs for the Chapter:  
Winter Moon: Erutan  
The Road Most Traveled: Jeremy Soule  
Under an Old Tree: Robert L. Euvino
> 
> Thank you to all who keep up with this story! It's giving me all the motivation to keep going with it and not let it fall into Fanfiction Hell.

Only two more All-Maker stones remained tainted, the Water stone and the Tree stone. The latter was so deeply swamped with the foul magic that Lylenna doubted it would be cleared until the source of it all was snuffed out. The Water Stone lay on the far west side of the island, a four day’s journey ahead of her. After she had slain the serpentine dragon at Saering’s Watch, she had trekked back to the Skaal Village and when she had ensured that those who remained were safe, she turned back out into the freezing wilderness.

South was the faster option, head back into the ash wastes where at least it was warmer, but she ran the risk of encountering ash spawn or worse: ash hoppers. Taking the north way around the island meant icy conditions and the reikling tribes. South it was, and south she went. As she made her way through the snow-covered forest of pine, she hummed a new tune and tapped her fingers against her legs to the beat.

_ “Forest bare and white….dwells there by night….listen to her cry sorrow’s song,”_ she sang quietly to herself. She often sang or played her flute when she was deep in thought, it helped her focus. It was something of an old habit that she had picked up in her time at the Bard’s College. She had spent a year there amongst her fellow minstrels, blending their teachings together with what she had learned as a young girl.

Lylenna wistfully sighed mid-verse. That had been a simpler time that felt like it was entire lifetimes away. Thoughts of her home and her childhood floated through her mind: the deep forests that her sister had always said were protected by spirits; her mother’s carefully curated gardens where her older brother used to play hide and seek with Little Lenna when she was very small; crawling, multicolored ivy growing proudly along the walls and gates of the Rostian estate; the clopping of hooves on the cobbled road leading into town; her family, huddled close together and shivering in the pale gray dawn…. Lylenna sucked in a breath, halting abruptly. _No,_ she thought,_ not today. _Instead she picked up a more lively tune and proceeded to dig her feet out of the soft snow. She decided that there would be no more reminiscing on her past today.

She instead replayed her encounters with Miraak in her head, fingers tapping away. The way her dovahsos had reacted to his presence had her baffled: it had felt as though it was drawn to him, but not in a violent way as it did when she fought the dragons. This was…different, somehow. She put that mystery aside; a question for Paarthurnax or Durhneviir. “What does he need the temple for, anyway?” she muttered. _Soon they will finish my temple, and I can return home._ His words echoed in her mind. He hadn’t said something as cliché as “…_and I can return to my rightful place as ruler_” or whatever it was that self-important men said. No, he had called it “home.”

“I certainly do not blame you; I would not wish to stay in that horrible place either,” she said to nobody in particular. The trees might’ve been listening, but she knew they could keep secrets better than anything.

Tap, tap, tap she went, on the winding game trail that led through the hills. “I just wish I knew more! Not knowing just makes this all pointless.” Her breath puffed and swirled from the breathing slits in her mask as she huffed. She stopped her tireless pace and pressed her hand to a large and ancient-looking fir. “What secrets does this island hold, Old One? Pieces of the puzzle are missing.” The trees were such excellent secret keepers because they never answered when spoken to. “Bah,” she told the tree, “I should have figured. You look the silent type. Thanks anyway.” She left the tree to its stoic vigil.

A few hours more of her tapping and singing brought her to just past where the snow and the ash intermingled into a sticky slush that coated her boots and dried into a powerfully thick layer. Not even a few good kicks against a stone seemed to dislodge the stuff. She’d have to soak the boots when she stopped for the night. As she was busily scraping what little she could off her boots, a lone man caught sight of her and wandered towards her as if she were a beacon. He was practically in the way of her next kick before she noticed him. His appearance startled her, he was dressed in rags and had wild, inky black eyes.

“You!” he said, “You know things! I know things too. Hidden things. Things you aren’t supposed to know!” Lylenna turned her palms out, the man looked franticly about for signs of something only he knew about. Clearly he was mad, and Lylenna felt her heart soften just a bit. Madness was not new to her.

“Slow down there. What do you know, what do I know?” Her voice was low and soothing.

“You don’t believe me. No one does! They don’t want to. I don’t want to either. But I can’t help it. They’re in my head!” came his erratic reply.

“What’s in your head?”

“Secret hidden _things!_” Divines, this man seemed in pain just speaking.

Lylenna’s eyebrows shot up, _what secrets does this island hold, Old One?_ She had asked for secrets, after all. Perhaps she had been heard.

“Secrets?” She asked hurriedly, “What kind of secrets?” She could barely contain her excitement, but kept her body neutral.

The man scoffed, like it was obvious what he spoke about: “The _secret_ kind!”

Lylenna felt her shoulders drop just a fraction in disappointment. So it wasn’t going to be the easy way. It was never the easy way. This man’s mind was no longer his own, she was sure of it. Perhaps this was a test, a challenge of sorts that Miraak had sent her. _Find me, if you can_. She could almost imagine that she heard his voice dripping with smug confidence in her head.

“Alright then,” she said. _I’ll play along._ “Where did you learn those secrets?” maybe he would be willing to give her the location of a clue.

“The Black Book!” Her blood turned to ice. “It shoved them in there. With black, slick fingers!” Oh. Perhaps it was not Miraak’s doing. Mora hounded her still; she knew all too well the fingers this man spoke of. “My fingers are too short! I can’t get them out!” The man began clawing at his ears, trying to drive his fingers deep into his brain. “You don’t want these things in your head! You don’t! You _don’t!”_

The man lunged at her, catching her with a right hook to her still-sore shoulder. Lylenna winced and scrambled back from his second blow. He yowled a terrible mad cry and swung again, slamming into her headlong and pinning her into the snow, knocking the wind from her as his elbow connected hard with her ebony cuirass with a sickening snap of bone. White noise filled her thoughts as she kicked upwards with all her might, sending the man tumbling down the gentle slope. Lylenna flipped upright, stars dancing in her vision as she struggled to regain her breath.

The man too was regaining his feet and spun around to begin his attack again. Lylenna drew her left arm in, and with a flourish of her wrist and a stomp of her foot the charcoal-grey bracelet on her arm snapped into a different staff. Three faces adorned the end of this one: One angry, one laughing, and the third crying out in sorrow. She took her aim at the man and from the end of her gifted staff shot a glowing pink ball of light that struck the man square in the chest. He stopped dead in his tracks and for the briefest moment, he had a look of such peace on his face as a swirling of rainbow butterflies engulfed him and whisked him away. The last butterfly flitted around her before disappearing with a _pop!_ and a spark of color.

Lylenna gazed at the boon she had been granted many years ago. It seemed that she would not be avoiding more memories. The Wabbajack had been Sheogorath’s gift to her, a gift that she had neither wanted nor deserved but had grown fond of anyways. Dirvenin, the mournful Bosmer with the pleading disposition of a kicked puppy, had approached her after one of her performances in the courtyard of the Bards College begging for her help with finding his master. True to her reputation as a veritable bloodhound for finding things lost and impossible, and her inability to say no to someone asking her for help, she had indeed tracked down the mer’s master. In the mind of a long-dead mad king.

Sheogorath had taking a liking to her, “Ye remind me of a lad I once knew, an adventurer with a pension for causing trouble! Quite a quagmire he found himself in in the end… Saved the world once or twice, you know! If you’re ever in New Sheoth, do look me up!” he had said to her as he twirled the staff into her hands and sending her on her way more confused than she had been at the start of the encounter. She had carried the Wabbajack around with her for nigh ten years now, and occasionally found it to be of great use. As in the case of the nameless madman she had just scuffled with, the staff held the power to send those touched with madness to the Madgod himself. Lylenna had read somewhere about Sheogorath’s plane of Oblivion; that its inhabitants, all mad as hatters, were well looked after and even seemed to enjoy living in the Shivering Isles.

“I don’t suppose _you_ know anything about Miraak, do you?” She asked the staff. She was more surprised that it _didn’t_ answer, all things considered. The Wabbajack swayed in her hand, all three faces quite mute, but she thought she saw the laughing face wink. She sighed and spun the staff back around her wrist, the simple gray bangle dancing round before settling between two leather plates on her gauntlet. “Now, barring any _further_ interruptions…!” She shook her head exasperatedly and began her careful descent down the ashen south side of the foothill, following the distinct line where the ash and snow met.

She pitched camp just east of Kagrumez, her tiny tent more of a suspended tarp than real shelter tucked between two boulders. Though her magic made her camp nearly indiscernible from the rest of her surroundings, Lylenna always felt better when she had at least two solid walls protecting her tent. Her boots sat soaking in a small divot in the boulder that had filled with snow. She sat with her legs folded beneath her and scribbled in her journal as the sun’s rays faded like liquid gold behind the jagged peaks of the western shore. She squinted into the light, Hvitkald Peak, she believed that particular tooth was called.

“Of course you know that,” she quipped, glaring back down into her journal. “You know the name of a rock, but you don’t know a damn thing about this man!” The quill in her hand dashed a few lines and she began anew in the space just below the mistake. All of the reading she had done on the three-day boat trip from Windhelm had turned up nothing, the locals knew nothing; she had even sent a raven to Winterhold with questions and a request that Arch-Mage Tolfdir put his apprentices to work in the Arcaneum to find anything of note. Either the raven never arrived through the frigid and dangerous Sun’s Dawn winter, or the mages were still searching. Either way, in the moment they were of no help to her. Scratching out her writing again furiously, she slammed the little brown book closed and tossed it aside with the quill.

She knew that Miraak was mortal, and that he too shared the dragonblood. He was trapped in Apocrypha and he was controlling the minds of the people to do…something with the All-Maker Stones to free himself, and that was all she knew.

She hit the bed roll with a deflated huff, folding her hands behind her head as the cool darkness set in around her. _Sleeping always helps_. Her eyelids drooped and she drew a comfortable sigh as the exhaustion of the day set in. _Think about it more tomorrow…._


	10. An Inn, Some Music, A Dream, and A Terrible Chapter Title.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello all!! Boy do I wish I had a better title for this chapter but alas, titles are challenging.
> 
> Music for the chapter:  
Fee Ra Huri: OMNIA  
Myth: Adrian Von Ziegler  
Tavern: Jason Hayes  
Winter Moon: Erutan
> 
> Please leave criticisms! They are incredibly appreciated! Thank you to everyone who continues to read this little project of mine, its really encouraging to see people enjoying it. Dovahzul translated at the end!

Tomorrow and the next two days came and went much in the same way as the first day of her travels had gone, with Lylenna humming her way through the snow and ash and occasionally scrapping with a local wild terror. She really hates the ash hoppers. _Too many legs, too fast, nothing should be able to jump like that and the JELLY_ _they spew? No thank you. _Cleansing the Water Stone had actually been easier than cleansing any of the other monoliths because she had merely needed to Shout the summoned Lurker off the edge of the cliff that the stone was perched upon. Satisfied with the creature’s ragdoll fate, perhaps more than she should have been, Lylenna stood with her toes very near to the rocky edge and watched the gulls swoop over the chilly waves and the shore below.

She stretched her arm as high as she could, fingers splayed as she tried to touch the clouds beyond her reach and her heart ached. If she were heading down the slope, she might have simply Shouted her ethereal thu’um and thrown herself from the precipice if only for a fleeting moment of what it might be like to fly. Alas, for she was not seeking a trip to the bottom of the frigid sea below her, instead tasting the skies and the sun directly above her for a moment more before turning and beginning her climb back over and around Hvitkald Peak. Her footprints remained undisturbed in the snow, and she came to the point where they continued east, but she decided that if this were to be her march into the jaws of the beast she would have at least one more night’s rest in a bed proper.

She veered towards the raven-shaped peak that watched over the town and found herself meandering into the inn near supper time. The Retching Netch was packed with people, mostly Dunmer miners and sailors. The din was enough to make her body vibrate, it must have been at least a month since she had been around so many people in one place. She stomped off as much ash from her boots as she could, slipped her mask and hood off, and nodded to the mercenary--perched in his usual chair by the hearth--and descended the stairs into the crowd. Several heads turned and acknowledged her with a raised mug. Being a Breton, she stood a few inches shorter than most of the patrons in the inn and had to elbow her way to the counter and shout her request to Geldis.

“If I might have a room this evening, Geldis?”

The Dunmer pursed his thin lips, shrugging apologetically: “Since you reopened the mines, there’s been no room for rent here! Sorry, outlander.” Lylenna felt her spirits plummet, _Divines I just want to sleep indoors!_

“Surely there is a corner I can set up in? Geldis, I have been sleeping in the snow and ash for a month straight!” She pleaded. Geldis, kind soul he was, looked so wholly remorseful that she felt bad for guilting him. She batted her eyes and pouted impressively,“Please?”

“I can’t just toss out some poor paying sod, lass!” He grabbed a tankard and rag and began wiping the mug clean. “I am, truly sorry.” Lylenna pouted, comically exaggerating her expression and leaning over the counter. Geldis had been one of the first people on Solstheim to show friendliness for her, and while she had been running errands for Neloth and the townspeople she had become acquaintances with the cheery inkeep. She knew he had a soft heart and she also knew that he had _some_ backbone, otherwise he would have let her dramatics get the better of him without a fight.

“Lylenna, don’t look at me like that,” he said with a sideways glance at her over the rim of the now-shining tankard. He placed the cup on the bar and Lylenna rapped her knuckles on the counter. Geldis rolled his eyes, not truly annoyed with the woman, and poured her a perfect matze. She took a gulp of the warm, almost sweet spirit. The sound of patrons all chattering and laughing over their drinks and meals gave her pause.

“Geldis, if I play will you let me set up in a broom cupboard or something?”

“A broom cupboard.” He chuckled and shook his head, “Where do you get these ideas, outlander?” Lylenna took another swig and shot the Dunmer a look of mock insult. He sighed, shaking his head once more and inwardly admitting defeat.

“Fine, I can squeeze you in somewhere I suppose.”

Lylenna’s heart leaped, and the old mer couldn’t contain his laughter at the sight of this Breton at his bar, so very excited over the prospect of sleeping under a roof, potentially in the broom closet. The woman drained the rest of her matze in one go and coughed, drawing her flute from its pouch at her waist. She balanced upon the lower rungs of her stool and played a long, high, vibrato note that turned every head in the inn her way. The silence in the room was palpable. Lylenna smiled, her lips still around the mouthpiece of the flute, and took a breath.

She launched into a fast-paced rhythm, the notes like the dancing of a rushing river or the beating of a racing heart. Her lone flute was quick and clear. Several patrons recognized the tune almost instantly and gave a raucous yell; they joined the melody with banging fists upon Geldis’ tables in time with her relentless tune.

Lylenna hopped off the stool, landing with nearly no jolt to her playing, she danced her way to the open space in the center of the bar, cantering and skipping and twirling. Tables were pushed back, drinks abandoned at the bar, someone had produced a lute from somewhere and had joined the song as well—if slightly off-key--. Bang bang upon the tables and the floors and twiddle dee on the flute, Lylenna flashed one shy miner a wink from behind her flute and he rose from his chair to join the rowdy dance.

This was what Lylenna believed Skooma felt like, the drug was potent and claimed to leave one feeling more alive than even the rush of battle. She did not mind that the patrons were not watching her; the impromptu and slightly stumbling line dance that had formed before her was more than satisfactory. She had spun back to stand next to the lute player, still tapping her feet and occasionally skipping round, the miners had all chimed in a loud chorus: _Wack fol'a day diddle dee dye doe! _

She glanced to Geldis, who had a look of such happiness upon his face that Lylenna had no choice but to keep playing—not that she had planned on stopping anytime soon, regardless. She slowed her next song down, this one more an epic than a jig. Patrons paired up and drunkenly danced a Dunmer step dance, even the stalwart yet sassy Teldryn had risen from his seat by the door to join in the fun. Cheering song persevered through the sloshing of sujamma and the hearty laughter of the miners that lasted for what felt like all night.

On and on she played, and when nearly every patron had collapsed of inebriated exhaustion or retired to their homes for the night, she finished her set with the slow and somewhat haunting tune she had drummed up on her way from Skaal Village. When the final note ceased, she twirled her flute and slipped it back into the pouch with a slight bow to the remaining people.

Geldis approached her from the bar, shaking his head with a disbelieving smile on his lips. Lylenna chuckled and couldn’t resist a jab at him.

“Geldis, do you know how to nod your head, or do you just shake it? It cannot be good for your neck.” The mer began to shake his head again but stopped himself from repeating the gesture again. Instead he simply laughed, the pealing sound like a bell in the now-quieted inn.

“Touche, outlander. I do believe you have earned more than a broom cupboard this evening. As luck would have it, a room opened up not too long ago. Come,” he waved her along towards the back of the building, guiding her into a small but well-kept room. The mere sight of the bed made Lylenna want to cry with relief and joy but _how unbefitting of the Dragonborn, pull yourself together._

“Thank you, Geldis. You have no idea how grateful I am to not have to sleep outside tonight.” She flashed him a radiant smile that dimmed her exhaustion a bit, Geldis could see the dark circles under her eyes, she was sure. The inkeep nodded his head with a knowing smirk and a wink and closed the door behind him. No sooner had his footsteps faded into the bar did Lylenna begin to strip out of her ashy robes and breastplate. She tossed the armor to the chair, kicked off her boots, and stretched her back out before flopping face first into the bed with a delighted sigh.

The sound of Geldis pushing chairs and tables back into their rightful places lulled her to sleep, the rhythmic thrum that Solstheim itself seemed to omit like a soothing rum beat. She had barely fallen asleep when she began to dream, the rolling green and gold fields of her home before her mind’s eye; she floated through the grass as fast as the wiry sparrowhawk that used to chase the songbirds. Inhaling deeply, she smelled the earthy musk of freshly tilled dirt and the dry, autumn-like aroma of the golden wheat. There was another strange scent she couldn’t place, but it was not unpleasant in the slightest; she hummed a soft melody that traveled across the fields as loudly as if it were played by an entire company of bards.

Onward she ran, never tiring, over the fields of gold and green and past babbling rivers that flowed dark gray and white; she realized that she was not running at all but flying on great wings. She skimmed over the earth, both high above it and right upon it, her large wings pressing downward but never striking the ground and gained speed. She roared with exuberant joy, _Zu’u los stin,_ her dovahsos sang. The strange scent wafted through her nostrils once again, now she could discern that it was like well-worn leather and pristine parchment. It was metal and magic and oddly alluring. She swung her head, deep green eyes scanning the endless hills. Miles and miles away stood a figure, and both an eternity later and in an instant she was before it.

Her claws dug into the soft earth behind the stranger, who made no move to face her. She looked down and saw her feet, bare and pale and very much human again. She had to crane her neck to see the stranger’s face, but all she could see was a golden mask and a forest green hood. Lylenna heard her inhale echo across the fields, and she took a hurried step back from her adversary. _You!_ She spoke without moving her lips yet her voice was loud and clear. Miraak continued to stand as still as stone, hands at his sides and head tilted slightly upward. _How did you get here?_ Nothing. She should have felt fear, or rage, but instead was irritated. She dared to reach her hand out but despite standing almost directly next to him, her fingers grasped nothing but the void. _HEY!_ Lylenna called out and stomped to stand in front of Miraak, glaring up at the interloper. _I was having a great dream. Why are YOU here, you bastard? _

She tried once more to reach out and grab him, and still caught nothing between her fingers. Her hand swung, backhanding the space where Mirrak stood and passing right through him. _Do you think you can ignore me, in my own dream? Answer me, oh great Champion! _Her taunt reverberated around them, and Miraak stirred just slightly. He locked on to a point above Lylenna’s head. _You…you can’t see or hear me, can you? _She spoke and was ignored once more, confirming her theory. Intrigued, she studied the man before her.

He was very tall, he had to be at least a foot and a half taller than her. Her memory of what his robes had looked like when she had first seen him in Apocrypha was hazy, and she did not know if the swirling daedric pattern of his robes here was really how it looked or if it was her imagination. The impassive visage of his mask glinted in the ethereal sunlight, as well as from the sharp spaulders on his broad shoulders. _Who ARE you,_ she asked, and stretched her hand up to his mask, exhaling with frustration when it passed right through the metal again.

_ Kolos hi, kolos zu’u? Daar los ni ol nii lost us. _He spoke, but his voice was so far away and muffled that she barely heard him. It was like the whisper of the wind in the mountains. 

_ What did you say?_ She rose up on her toes to better see through the slits in his mask, _say that once more. _Miraak tilted his head, as if listening for a sound. _SPEAK, DRAGONBORN! _She shouted into his face, and he startled just a bit. The slits of his mask found her face for a fraction of a moment before he vanished, hand outstretched, into a void of writhing tentacles.

He was replaced by Mora’s eldritch form, all-encompassing and dripping toxic sludge into her subconscious paradise. Lylenna screamed and backpedaled, absolutely no distance forming between her and the mass of evil even as she turned to run. He was still right there in front of her. Long, slinking tentacles swished around her, catching her ankles and wrists and she thrashed her limbs that suddenly felt like lead. The tentacles _burned_ and she cried out with no sound.

_ You will be mine, one way or another. You cannot escape me, My Champion._ Mora’s slow, deliberate, thick voice invaded her mind, nearly deafening. _Kill Miraak, and I will make you…immortal._ Lylenna furiously shook her head, making Mora’s form turn into a dark blur. She struggled once again against her writhing binds, and was unceremoniously dropped to the ground as Mora, too, faded into nothingness. Her once green and gold paradise a gray misty void.

Lylenna did not rest well, despite sleeping in the bed she had worked hard to earn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dovahzul:  
Zu'u los stin: I am free  
Kolos hi, kolos zu’u? Daar los ni ol nii lost us: Where are you, where am I? This is not as it was before.


	11. Before the Surface is Broken, There is Reflection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> \---Super short one for the moment. I was out of town and in serious writer's block. I find that writing the quiet moments is the hardest thing to do. I have PLANS dammit! But I gotta set up the plans!! 
> 
> But in short, the usual: Thanks to the readers, you give me inspiration; please PLEASE somebody be a Grammar Cop and let me know if I'm actually making sense; and keep on being awesome y'all!---

She left Raven Rock the next morning, almost as exhausted as she had been when she had arrived. She bade her farewells to Geldis over a cup of elves’ ear tea and tried her best to remain stoic. As the silhouette of the bulwark faded into the ashen haze, Lylenna felt her heart sink with every step she took. Her boots left deep imprints in the ash, the trail slowly stretching east. Tel Mithryn loomed on the far horizon and Lylenna trudged towards the foreign architecture for perhaps the final time.

Mora wanted her, that she knew. Daedra take what they want. Even if she defeated Miraak, there was still Mora to contend with. And Alduin. And the civil war. Lylenna’s jaw clenched, this side trip that she had believed to be routine rabble-rousing had become far more than she ever thought. Her fists clenched at her sides, small sparks fizzing and popping in the dry air and igniting the flakes of falling ash. _I will not become Mora’s champion. _She was kicking up flurries of ash beneath her boots with every step; a few ash hoppers smartly scuttled away before they could be immolated.

“Mora will not get his slimy, disgusting tentacles on me.” She hissed and kicked a piece of burnt wood. Her biting words rumbled across the slope, her thu’um scattering a few brave birds that dared to perch in the ash wastes. In truth, she was terrified. The thought of spending eternity in that wretched plane of existence at the mercy of that demon sent a chill down her spine and made her stomach turn. She would lose her mind, that she knew for certain. She would rather die, let Miraak win if it meant that she would not endure Mora’s torment. _Let Miraak win, and perhaps the world would place its burdens on him_, she thought bitterly. _No Alduin, no wars, not my problem. _

_ Miraak._ The name itself was no longer strange to her, but the way her thoughts became jumbled when she thought of him was odd. He was supposed to be her adversary, he had sent his cultists after her and had made it quite clear that he was not going to let her stand in his way. His words had given her pause: “Soon they will finish my temple, and I can return home…” The dream had to have been real too, even though she was unable to physically touch him. Mora’s tentacles had left deep purple bruises on her wrists that had proven far too evil to be cleansed by healing magic. It seemed far more likely that Mora was playing mind games with the both of them, but Lylenna couldn't shake the feeling that Mora was using Miraak as both bait and reward for her unrequited loyalty. No, Miraak had to have been there as well.

Lylenna tipped her head back to the gray sky; it was ugly but it was the real sky and it did not have eyes staring into her soul. The memory of Miraak's hand outstretched as he was dragged back into the void was haunting. As much of a threat that he was, it dawned on her that he had spent years uncountable in that hell. The cloudy sky swirled in the wind, dropping fresh ash like snow to the land, and the sparking of her shock spells skipped up her arms, making the inscribed designs of her bracers glow faintly. _Mora wishes to replace his champion. I think not._

It was an hour from sundown when Lylenna felt the rushing flow of levitation magic bringing her up to the top of Tel Mithryn. Neloth greeted her in his usual way of noticing her standing near him after a few minutes of concentrated silence.

“Ah, it’s you,” he said, mildly irritated with being interrupted.

Lylenna looked the ancient Dunmer in the eye, and curtsied low:

“Master Neloth Telvanni, tis been an honor. If I don’t return, do not seek me out in Apocrypha.” Neloth’s brows connected and his confusion turned to intrigued surprise. Lylenna worried at her lip for a moment, scanning the bookshelves behind him. “If I could ask a favor of you…?”

Neloth paused a moment, “What do you plan to do?”

“Well, I have an idea. I don’t think it will work, unless I have your help.”

“Don’t be daft woman, whatever it is you plan on doing should likely get you killed, you most certainly need my help.”

She shot him a quick exasperated glare. “I have a theory, it’s purely conjecture, but I think it could work. But, should it not, well....”

“Oh, this should be good. DROVAS, fetch me my tea!”


	12. Ascent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> \--I don't know if curse-word warnings are needed, given the Explicit rating that I have for this story, but I suppose this is the warning from here on out? This is where the story and the prologue meet, if anyone is concerned with the nuances of this timeline. I know I'm kind of skipping around a bit, but I'm figuring it out! This is actually just part of a bigger chapter that felt I needed to break up into smaller chunks. 
> 
> Enjoy, thanks for the Kudos!!--

“_Go._ My father sacrificed himself so that you could destroy Miraak and lift his master’s shadow from the land,” Frea commanded. Lylenna stood rooted to the spot as the elder knowledge of Bend Will swirled itself within her, making her dovahsos recoil from the wicked words. She stared at Storn’s crumpled form in horror, the words of the Shout branded into his skin. Frea’s grief-stricken howl barely heard over the ringing in her ears and the deafening _no, No, NO! Couldn’t save him! Should have been me!_ in her head. She grabbed the Black Book from where it had fallen into the snow, and she _ran._

As she fled the village, Frea’s call of “Go! Kill Miraak! Do not fail!” hounded her and left her rattled. She had to run, had to get away from the sight of the man she promised to help in a heap upon the snow. She could feel her heartbeat in her ears as she sprinted through the thick powder. Up she ran, towards the temple, past dragon skeletons and past the entranced people who still toiled away at the stone archways. Her lungs were on fire as she threw open the heavy doors and flung herself into the darkened corridors. She didn’t stop until she found herself in one of the antechambers before the inner sanctum, dark and dusty with old torches long since burned out to nothing and foggy glass bottles upon broken shelves.

She stumbled into the smaller room to her left, and collapsed to her hands and knees on the dirty floor. _This must stop! Mora cannot take anything else from this land! I won’t let him!_ Her heart was pounding, and her scarf was damp with tears behind her mask. She had dropped the book as she fell, it was sitting open a few feet away from her and thrumming its unnatural sound. She stared at it, furiously trying to keep herself from kicking it away in rage.

Instead, she stood and inhaled deeply, letting the rest of the world fade away into nothing as she grounded herself. Another deep breath in and out, and the torches nearest her flickered to life. One more, and the brazier in the center of the room roared awake and cast flickering orange light over her and the book. The book’s shadow shifted of its own accord, like the tentacles that she knew would come for her the moment she approached it. The brazier also lit up a set of beds previously inhabited by the cultists, some unmade but otherwise orderly. Chests still full of belongings sat at the foot of each, and shelves containing books and other dusty objects stretched off into the darkness beyond the radius of the firelight.

Lylenna took in the sight, this room that could very well be her final resting place. “Well, I suppose it could be worse. At least the spiders will mourn me,” she muttered into the musty silence. She gazed at the book upon the floor, resigning herself to her fate with her head held high, jaw set and shoulders squared. She took a step towards the book, and its pages flashed rapidly to the center to unleash the grasping appendages. Her final step on the plane of Mundus took her into the enveloping arms of Hermaeus Mora.

She awoke as she always did when she was dragged into Apocrypha; with a sickening stop and a spinning head. She managed to gain her footing without much incident, but walking was another story. She stumbled a bit until the overwhelming feeling of nausea receded and then began her journey in earnest. The first Chapter was simply the path to the next, with no incident. Lylenna felt herself teleported to the next Chapter, and somehow the chilly air in Apocrypha managed to be even more overbearing here. The massive tower that she seemed to be within stretched high above her, a maze of interwoven bridges and pathways through which Seekers drifted and loose pages spiraled.

While she wished she could stop and collect every rare tome she came across, Lylenna pushed herself to focus; Hermaeus Mora was trying to trick her by placing every tome she could have ever wanted within her grasp. She huffed behind her mask as she passed a particularly inviting stack of Falmer tomes and deep blue soul gems sitting on a table, instead zeroing her masked gaze in on her third “On Apocrypha” manuscript. Each bore a unique title and were made of the same odd magic that the Black Books were made from, so she swiped them from their pedestals. It was a good thing that she had, for at the top of the mountainous structure sat four lecterns each bearing a different image of Mora’s characteristics.

After the four books were placed—and a few more seekers ripped in half by her magic—Lylenna now found herself in a changing hallway that shifted, slid, and turned randomly in several different directions. She had to backtrack once or twice but she finally managed to make some headway. _Putrid, absolutely foul, _she thought as she sidestepped a swiping tentacle that collided with the rank pages with a wet thump behind her. “I despise this.” She glanced upward, and through the wrought-iron ceiling she could make out the summit in the distance, three dragons swooping around on patrol. She adjusted her hood and pressed forward. _Stand still and die, Lenna._

Her dread grew with every step that she took towards the book at the end of the way, some premonition telling her that _this is it, this is the one_. Her boots made dull thuds on the floor, heavy with purpose. She stomped up to the book and took a deep breath to steady her hammering heart and clear her fogged head. Her fingers had barely made contact with the cover when it flipped open, eager and inviting and so willing to pull her closer to either her demise or Mora’s victory. Lylenna barely had time to react when she emerged on the other side of the book: a Seeker was upon her in an instant—too fast to react with stealth or accuracy. She flung both palms out before her, a ward cocooning her in glimmering light that stopped the Seeker’s advance upon her. The Seeker gurgled, its many arms scrabbling at the ethereal surface of her ward for any small chink in her magic.

_ “Fuck off, you nightmare-beast!” _she growled at the thing, bringing her palms together and focusing the ward into a narrow shield. She pressed forward, the ward digging into the creature’s toothy abdomen. It shrieked horribly, arms and tentacles flailing wildly. Lylenna splayed her fingers and the ward fanned up and out, slicing into the lesser daedra, and then she pulled her palms apart with the ward. The Seeker screamed and was torn asunder before her. Stepping over the remains, she strode forward and realized that this was the very place that she had first met Miraak, the word wall on the platform ahead of her chanting as it would normally. Her hand reached out, the word’s essence dancing on her fingertips like a living being. _MUL, _it read.

“Strong.” She echoed the word back to the wall. A roar sounded above and behind her, and from the summit Miraak’s slate-gray dragon was speeding. He was much faster than she thought possible, and glided low over her with another roar and a frost shout that froze icicles onto her armor. Lylenna darted her hand up to the green swirling sky, a wave that she hoped the dovah would hail. Instead, he banked round and dove back in towards her with fangs parted in a roar. The dragon’s claws barely cleared her head as she dove away from their fierce approach. She spun to her feet and readied a Shout; feeling the evil thu’um work its way into her consciousness like a coiling snake about to strike, she planted her feet and roared at the dragon:

“Come on, I’m right here!”


	13. Clash of Souls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> \--Part two of three for this big chapter that I did. Aaaand ACTION!--  
Translations at the end!

The dovah banked hard and plummeted once again towards the tiny mortal that dared to invade this realm. Lylenna sucked in a breath and lined herself up with the beast.

_ GOL HA DOV!_

The shout ripped from her throat and burned like fire, it struck the dragon and he snapped open his wings to slow his unrelenting descent. He landed heavily before Lylenna, who was busy breaking the ice off of her armor.

“_Hail, thuri. Your thu’um has the mastery.”_ The dragon’s deep voice so near to her made her bones rattle with its vibrations. She picked a chunk of ice from her bracer and eyed the dragon, holding it out to him.

“_Drem yol lok_,” she stated flatly, “I should have you know that this is most unappreciated.” She brandished the ice in her hand, and the dragon hummed a throaty chuckle. Her expression softened when she took a better look into the dragon’s sickly yellow eyes: “_Unslaad krosis, dii fahdon,_” she whispered. “What is your name, dovah?”

The dragon’s massive head swung low, to be at her level. “_Zu’u Sahrotaar._” Lylenna nodded, and Sahrotaar lowered his head further still. “_Climb aboard, and I will carry you to Miraak._” She extended her hand to him, palm out, and he gently acknowledged her with a slight bump of his nose. She slung her leg over his neck and situated herself between his neck sails, carefully adjusting her weight and grip as he shifted beneath her. With a powerful downward thrust the pair were airborne, the chilly and stagnant air parting for them as Sahrotaar surged upwards.

“_Beware, Miraak is strong. He knew you would come here._”

Lylenna snorted, “He left me with no choice, unfortunately.”

_ If he didn’t want me to come here, he should not have sent his cultists after me. _The blatant challenge could not go unanswered, surely he knew that. Bitter wind whipped past the two as Sahrotaar climbed higher and higher towards the towering summit. The roiling sea of ink beneath them swirled with shadows and monsters unknown, more and more tentacles reaching skyward as they drew closer to the tower. Sahrotaar roared, announcing their arrival to the other dov who scattered to land on opposing arches.

“Sahrotaar, are you so easily swayed?” The unmistakable voice called out from below as the dragon came to rest on the grand platform. Lylenna’s teeth clenched, refusing to allow the jab to bother her. _It is not his fault that his will is so fragile, bastard, _she wanted to bite back. She instead held her head high, regally perched upon her borrowed steed. Her inner dragon restlessly fluttered, the nearness to Miraak causing the same strange tugging sensation as before. The other two dragons shifted forward in anticipation, but Miraak held up a hand to still the pair.

“No. Not yet. We should greet our guest first.” He folded his hands behind his back and tipped his gaze up to her. She was glad for her hood and mask, as she might have been more afraid of what he might discern from her shifting expression if he could see her face. She remained atop Sahrotaar’s neck, hands folded in her lap in an effort to appear unaffected by the gravity of the moment. Miraak only scoffed.

“And so the First Dragonborn meets the Last Dragonborn at the summit of Apocrypha. No doubt just as Hermaeus Mora intended. He is a fickle master, you know. But now I will be free of him. My time in Apocrypha is over. You are here in your full power, and thus subject to my full power. You will die. And with the power of your soul, I will return to Solstheim and be master of my own fate once again.”

Deep within her, her dovahsos reared its head and roared a defiant challenge. _Just try it._ Miraak drew his sword from his hip and spun his staff in the other hand. The other two dragons kicked up a flurry of wind that nearly buffeted her off of Sahrotaar as they took off from their perches. With intended slowness, she gracefully dismounted from Sahrotaar, stroking the great beast’s neck and muttering a soft “thank you” to him before she turned to the dragon priest across the platform. Sarohtaar took to the skies and the dov clashed with a sound like thunder above them.

Deliberately, she marched towards the hulking man with her hands folded behind her and her chest forward. She would play the practiced part of noble diplomat before all else: she stopped about fifteen feet from him, dwarfed by his impending size but somehow managing to look unbothered despite her inner terror. _Shit, shit, shit,_ she thought, _SHIT I hope this works._

“You talk too much,” she intoned. “Now, tis my turn.” She extended her hand to him, “We need not fight.” She saw his sword arm falter slightly before he swung the blade with a growl, a long whip-like tentacle lashing out of the blade towards her. Her extended hand had barely enough time to raise itself to protect her face; the tentacle striking her across her ribs and sending her staggering backward.

“This is the only way, Dragonborn. The only way I can be free.” He swung the sword again and advanced at her, this time she was able to bring her forearms together to cast her ward. Her feet slid on the loose paper floor, but she remained standing. Within a moment he was upon her, slashing his sword downward at her.

_ FEIM! _

The daedric blade passed through her ethereal form and embedded itself into the floor. She danced away, robes twirling as she spun to evade his staff that came dizzyingly close to her solidifying form.

“You don’t know that!” Lylenna shot back at him. Miraak wrenched the sword from its ensnarement and readied his blade again.

“Fate decreed that you had to die…” He swung again, blade glancing off her ward with a shower of magic sparks. “…so that I could win my freedom.” His shoulders squared, and Lylenna felt the surge of his thu’um before it even left his body:

_ FUS RO DAH!_

His shout was primal and carried such weight to it that it sent her flying back almost to the edge of the tower. She landed and bounced twice, sliding precariously close to the drop that extended miles below her. The force of the impact knocked the wind out of her, and she scrambled away from the precipice sucking in the breath she had lost. _Why does diplomacy NEVER work?_ Her head snapped up to see Miraak Shout once again, the whirlwind sprint bringing him up to her in an instant.

Lylenna flicked her wrist and her ebony battlestaff manifested from the ring on her thumb, catching both his blade and his staff on their downward slash with a loud c_lang_. She braced herself against his staggering blow, and he leaned more of his weight onto her. Her knees and arms shook with the effort to hold him back, and through gritted teeth she snarled at him:

“Just _listen_ to me!”

“Ha,” he jeered, “There is nothing that you can say to me that I have not already tried.” Lylenna’s knees gave first, sending her to the floor. Miraak readied another Shout, but Lylenna reacted faster:

_ FUS RO DAH!_

Compared to his thundering Shout, hers was nothing more than a slightly-raised voice. It did stagger him back enough for her to regain her footing, and swinging her staff in a wide arc she caught him across the arms with the bladed end. Her magic thrummed its low notes and she was shrouded in her slightly green lightning magic. Her staff vibrated like a tuning fork as she channeled the magic into the weapon, and she balanced on the balls of her feet in anticipation for his next strike.

It came as a flurry of slicing attacks that left her on the defensive again, the sound of battle ringing out hollowly and shattering the unnatural silence of Apocrypha. Green lightning danced through the air with incredible speed and accuracy, striking true against her foe, whose Shouts were relentless and twenty times as strong as hers. She managed to land an especially hard electrically-charged strike to his shoulder that caused his arm to seize. He dropped his staff with a roar of fury and landed a sharp kick to her ribs. She felt one or two snap and she gasped with the intensity of the pain that shot through her.

She struggled to remain standing, but she would not let it end like this.

“Cheap shot,” she hissed under her breath. Miraak’s hand darted down for the staff, but Lylenna brought hers up and connected the heavy blunt end of her staff with his chest with a heavy whump. He staggered back and Lylenna grabbed the twisted wood. She lobbed it with all the strength she could over the edge of the platform.

“No!” Miraak bellowed, lurching forward after it but connecting instead with a solid ward that Lylenna held tethered in her fists. She charged forward, pushing him back with the ward like a siege shield. She heaved him backward, breaking the ward with a splitting screech of torn magic and firing a barrage of shock spells at him. Each blast was like a dagger, stabbing through his robes with little effort. He grunted and staggered back.

_ WULD NAH KEST!_

Miraak zipped away from her, disappearing into the inky pool of liquid opposite them. Lylenna darted after him, spinning round in a desperate attempt to find him again. The platform shuddered as one of his dragons crashed down upon it, bleeding heavily from slashing wounds over its face. Lylenna readied her magic, preparing a ward should the dragon spit its flames at her.

“Kruziikrel!” Lylenna whirled around, Miraak had appeared at the center of the platform, translucent as if he had Shouted Become Ethereal and his curling fingers directed at the dovah. “_Zii los dii du_!” Kruziikrel’s scales began to immolate, and she watched in stunned horror as the dragon melted away and surrendered its soul to Mirrak with merely a command.

Miraak absorbed the soul, its fiery tendrils wrapping him in a pearlescent glow. He whipped around to face her, and she felt the thu’um surge again. _Fuck, not again!_ She gasped and clashed her arms together to summon the ward.

_ YOL TOOR SHUL!_

White hot flames curled around the edges of the shield, the impact sending shocks of pain into her broken ribs. She cried out in pain as her torso threatened to implode; her ward shattering as the last of his flames dissipated around her. In its wake, Mirrak rushed her, sword raised in his right hand and blue sparks in his left. The same shock spell that had nearly waylaid her upon her first encounter with him arced through the air and slammed into her chestplate.

“Aaargh! Fuck!” She managed to grit out before Miraak barreled into her.

Masks clanged together, causing her to see stars and her eyes water. It jerked her head back violently, her staff falling from her grip and looping back around her thumb. He gripped the front of her robes, yanking her off her feet before he threw her with little effort towards the sludge pool. She landed in the shallow muck and it _burned_.

_ FEIM ZII GRON! _

She Shouted and the muck fell right through her nearly invisible form. Flinging herself from the pool, she charged up a stronger healing spell. It gently hummed in her hands as she circled Miraak, who was patiently waiting at the ready for the Shout to subside.

“I do not have to be your enemy!” Lylenna called. She was biding her time as she began to feel the thu’um slipping away. She was beginning to tire of being on the defensive.

“You fight valiantly against your fate, but I am stronger here,” he replied. Lylenna began to regain solid form and thus the ability to heal. Her spell was quick but powerful, and she bit her cheek to prevent her whimper from escaping as her ribs reset.

“Last chance, Miraak. Hear me out!”

“No, I am done being Hermaeus Mora’s pawn. This ends here!”

Pale green sparks surged in a storm cloak around Lylenna, and Miraak shrouded himself in his glowing armor.

“So be it.” Lylenna hissed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thuri-master  
Drem yol lok- literally "peace fire sky" but it's a customary greeting  
Unslaad krosis, dii fahdon- Many apologies, my friend.  
Zu'u- I (am) The "am" is often dropped in speech.  
Zii los dii du- (your) soul is mine (to) devour


	14. Do It.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> \--Part three of the bigger chapter. Thank you as always!--

Exhaustion was quickly settling into Lylenna’s bruised and battered bones. Adrenaline, instinct, and rage were the only things keeping her afloat in this fight, but to her credit, Miraak was beginning to slow down as well. Miraak had commanded his last two dragons to the ground and had consumed both of their souls, and he had mocked her when she cried out in anguish as Sahrotaar’s aegean hide burned away and his soul sucked away from his bones.

Lylenna had retaliated fiercely: a tempest of lightning and howling wind like a thundering drum with her at its epicenter. That had drained nearly all of the rest of her magica reserves, the aftermath of her singing storm leaving both Dragonborn haggard. Lylenna whipped out her battle staff, too drained to charge it with shock. Even with her enchanted gear, she was down to her physical skills until her magic returned to her. She leveled the staff at Miraak, whose sword arm shook slightly and whose magic was beginning to fail.

She whirled the staff, glancing off his blocking blade and bringing it back around with a twirl and a downward bash. It clashed with the green metal again, and with his arm. She did not pause and swung again, slicing him with the bladed end and then whipping it back the opposite way. The dull end smashed into his mask, splitting it with a screeching crack. Part of it fell from his face and it clattered to the floor. She gathered the remainder of her strength into her next Shout:

_YOL TOOR SHUL!_

Miraak dropped his sword, bringing both arms up to cover his half-masked face as her thu’um slammed into him with frighteningly concentrated flames that singed the leather of his bracers and disintegrated parts of his sleeves. Lylenna sucked in a deep, winded breath, the Shout leaving her lungs burning.

“This cannot be. I am the master of my own fate!” He grit, staggering away from her, barely dodging another slashing by her staff.

“I offered you a chance,” she managed between breaths, “you chose death over diplomacy.” Lylenna stumbled forward, staff lunging out and gashing into his thigh. Miraak roared, falling to one knee and clamping a gloved hand around the short blade and pulling with all his might. The staff was wrenched from her grasp, immediately snapping back into the ring around her thumb.

_ WULD NAH KEST!_

Miraak whirled away once more, into the murky pool as he had thrice before. He disappeared in a cloud of black mist and Lylenna readied herself for him to reappear in the center as she knew he would. The silence was deafening, not a sound save for her heart rapidly pounding and the blood in her ears. He hadn’t reappeared as she expected him to. _Did that bastard flee deeper into Apocrypha?_ Her chest heaved behind her armor. It had slipped, one of the straps had been caught by Miraak’s blade and now the edges of the cuirass were digging into her abdomen oddly. She could not risk a healing spell now, Miraak may simply be trying to lull her into a false sense of security and wasting magic on it now could mean nothing to defend herself with.

Her eyes darted around the summit, searching for any sign of movement. Movement she found, in the form of several masses of grotesque tentacles and eyes floating in the cold sky above. If her heart wasn’t pounding before, it certainly was now. She stood paralyzed, the chill of fear running down her spine like one of Mora’s tentacles.

_ Fuck, no not him, no no no NO! _Her chest constricted and breathing became nearly impossible as Mora drifted nearer. A single appendage wormed its way down to her, turning her face roughly to the center of the summit. Her fear turned to horror.

Miraak floated just above the pool in the center, his feet barely clear of the liquid. Suspended by seemingly nothing and limbs twisted at odd angles, he struggled against his arcane bindings. _…what….? I don’t—”_

“_Did you think you could escape me, Miraak?_” Mora’s voice was deep and it was darkness made sound and Lylenna shrunk before the words. Miraak stilled, chest heaving, before it was split with a sickening squelch. Whatever Mora growled next was drowned out by the white-out ringing in Lylenna’s ears as she stared in horror. Miraak coughed a gasping sound.

“May she be rewarded as I have,” his strained reply came as Lylenna felt her feet move of their own accord.

“NO! WAIT!” she shouted at Mora. All eyes turned to her but she could not tear hers from Miraak’s broken form impaled upon the tentacle. “Let me,” she said, “_master._” The word tasted as vile in her mouth as the being at which she slung the term was. 

Mora garbled a terrible laugh, “_As you wish, my Champion._” He brought Miraak down to his knees in the inky pool, his blood seeping out around the tentacle and down to the ink. She could not believe what she was doing. Lylenna moved as if she were in a trance, every step she took like the longest journey and her mind was racing. _Now or never now or never gods I hope this works._ Both palms of her hands began to glow a deep purple, and she strained with the effort to contain the wild spell that she summoned. _I can't let it end like this. I will not let Mora win! _The reverse-summon spell was beginning to seep into her bones with the effort it took to keep it stable. _Bastard or not, you don't deserve this! _

"I gave you so many chances, Dragonborn." She spat through gritted teeth. "You refused to step down. Now, you will get what you deserve." _Go back to Tamriel, go back home, go HOME._

One slippery tentacle hooked beneath the remainder of his mask, tipping it back from his face. Mora gurgled once again, “_See your demise, Miraak. Witness the price of your failure._” Lylenna’s feeble magic reserves were nearly gone once more and every scrap of her being screamed _NOW do it NOW! _ The violet magic engulfed him, swirling around his rapidly slipping body before dematerializing into the void. Nothing happened. They were both still very much trapped in their deadly confrontation and Miraak had not been banished to Tamriel as she had so desperately hoped he would be.

"_A valiant effort, Champion," _ the Prince droned. "_But that is magic beyond your ability. You have just one more chance to prove yourself to_ _me."_ His threat was transparent. "_Kill him._"

_Failed, you failed. _Lylenna blinked, the realization struck her hard and fast. _No, but that should have…I—NO! _She swayed, eye to eye with Mora’s former champion, whose pitch-black eyes were barely open, blood dripping from the corners of his mouth and from his nose. Confusion flitted across his features for a fraction of a second before his face contorted in pain as Mora shifted the tentacle. Her fingers curled, the very last of her magic forming a jagged spectral blade in her clenched fist. Mora leaned his massive form in, twisting the tentacle embedded in Miraak’s chest cruelly as she pushed her own mask out of her face.

The slightest glimmer of something she couldn't identify crossed his features, but she did not have time to process it. She flipped the bound dagger into a backhanded grip and pressed it up to his throat, never once breaking eye contact with him. Miraak’s shaking hand rose to hers, weakly grabbing her hand. He had a desperate look of defeat in his eyes.

“Just—end it.” He wheezed. He was barely alive.

“I will,” she nodded. “For us both.” Lylenna slammed the dagger into her own breast, howling a fiery cry and grinning with wicked defiance at Hermaeus Mora. “You will not have either of us, demon!” She snarled over Mora’s roaring. Lylenna twisted the dagger hard, feeling it pierce even deeper into her heart. She glanced back at Miraak, who caught her eyes with a look of pure shock before he was sucked into a raging portal of magic that vanished with a clap of thunder. Mora whipped the tentacle furiously, clamping around her throat and squeezing so hard that she nearly blacked out then and there. Her vision was quickly fading to gray as the pain and bleeding overtook her as the dagger dissipated, leaving a gaping gash in its wake. 

The world around her; Apocrypha’s roiling seas and sky, Mora’s violent writhing, everything seemed to slow to a halt around her as she was flung away by the tentacle. It was almost too still, she no longer felt any pain even as she collided with one of the wrought-iron fixtures. She felt—nothing at all? _That’s…strange. I would have thought that dying would be more painful than this. _She thought, her mind seemingly just as slow as her surroundings.

“That’s because yer _not_ dyin’.” 


	15. The Moment of Madness Made Material

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> \--So a little bit of lore that I stumbled upon: an old superstition goes as follows; "avoid thunderstorms, for they belong to Sheogorath". And I thought that was super cool and relevant. Sheo is my favorite Daedra by far, if you could not tell. Lylenna has this begrudging but genuine respect for him, even though her servitude was accidental. Enjoy and thank you for reading!--

Her world truly had ground to a halt around her, she realized. She was numbly sitting in the midst of frozen chaos at the snap of fingers. Lylenna sluggishly turned her head and came to rest her gaze upon a pair of swirling purple trousers and dark, ornate boots. The owner of said trousers and boots crooked his finger, and Lylenna shot to her feet.

“Breathe, little mortal.” Sheogorath compelled, and Lylenna obliged with a breath she did not realize she had been holding. She stared wide-eyed and her jaw might as well have remained on the floor as the Daedric Prince of Madness himself surveyed her with a raised eyebrow. His white eyes bore into her with questioning intensity and all she could do was splutter a meager “Sh-Sheogorath?”

The Prince rolled his eyes, crossing his arms around his chest. “How observant of you. Now, my tiny, puny, little mortal Champion, what in the name of Haskill’s britches are you doing here?” He jabbed his finger at her, poking her square in the forehead.

“I—what?”

“What are ye doin, messing with old Herma-Mora?”

Floored, Lylenna still could not form any real words. Sheogorath sighed impressively and planted his hands squarely on his hips looking very much the disappointed mother hen.

“Yer still trying to figure out what’s happening, I see. Well, since yer standin’ there all flabbergasted I’ll tell you.” He was absolutely correct; Lylenna was still trying to figure out why she was standing without collapsing much less why her accidental Daedric Lord of ten years was standing before her amidst the frozen fallout of her battle. She was six steps behind him even when he began to explain.

“You remember that fellow you sent me a while back? ‘Course you do, little one. Well, he was a fun one but he wasn’t one of mine, per se. I was wondering how you managed to find one of Mora’s sods.” Oh. The madman from the hills, yes, she remembered him! She had sent him to the Shivering Isles with the Wabbajack. She nodded quickly.

“I was curious, so I did some digging. Imagine my surprise when I find you here, mortal!” he jabbed her shoulder with his finger once more. “Messing with Mora and goin’ around sacrificing yourself for daedric magic. Well done for figuring that spell out, by the way. The thunder was a nice touch and the blood was verrrrry dramatic!”

“The…spell? That wasn’t you who sent Miraak out?”

“Nope! That was your doin’, little mortal. Well, mostly. Who do you think you learned it from?” He winked and she reeled at the implications of his words. _You just performed a Daedra’s spell!_ Divines and Daedra she needed to sit down. Her knees began to buckle but Sheogorath gave a hearty madman’s laugh and crooked his finger again, keeping her legs locked.

“Lord Sheogorath,” she started, “Why are you truly here? Surely not to congratulate me on using your spell.”

He laughed again, “Ha! I do love it when the mortals know they’re being manipulated. Makes things infinitely more interesting. My dear Champion,” He held out his hand, and she extended hers too. “I’m here to take my Wabbajack back!” His fingers softly brushed the metal bracelet around her wrist, and it slithered off like a snake into his hand. Before Lylenna could make any sound protest, he pressed a finger to her lips.

“The price you must pay for your stupidity, girl. You sent the poor bastard back and for what? He’ll bleed out within minutes and you would have died here. I rather like watching you, mortal, and if you died here while under my providence I’d be so bored! Not to mention I would never hear the end of it from Haskill. So, go! Back to the hum-drum day-to-day for you.”

His usual sing-songy cadence was laced with something deeper, a soft fondness that Lylenna did not dare assume to underestimate. Instead, she released his hand and dropped to one knee.

“Thank you, My Lord,” she bowed her head.

“No! Don’t be getting all noble with me, mortal! You just let me handle this…” He prodded the gash in her chest and it mended without even so much as a scar. “…And that.” Sheogorath glared at the steadfast chaos of Hermaeus Mora. “Farewell, Lylenna. Don’t be stupid again. I won’t be able to help you if you do.” He stepped back and turned on his heel. The crisp snap of his fingers returned Apocrypha to motion, and tentacles surged around them. A second snap of his fingers and Lylenna could just barely hear Sheogorath’s taunt to the demon:

“Morrrrraaaa! Don’t you know to avoid thunderstorms? They’re mine!”

A strong pulling sensation dragged her through a glowing gate and she swirled through space before she came to a spinning halt on her knees in the dusty glow of a dying brazier. With a pop! and a glittering gold butterfly, the Black Book disappeared from the temple floor. The first thing she noticed was that she could feel again and _by all the gods_ she wished she couldn’t. Every bone in her body felt like heavy steel that had been hammered into submission, and breathing made her throat feel as though it were being stabbed repeatedly with even the slightest inhale or movement. It blocked out everything else, all she could rationalize was that it was quiet and it hurt.

Tears welled up in her eyes, her trembling hands darting to her bruised throat with a healing spell drawing from her limited magicka. Her fingers had barely reached her neck when they stopped just a hair’s breadth away. Something was bidding her _wait_, quietly in the back of her mind the soft command echoed. The chiming glow illuminated a trail of dark fluid on the temple floor that hadn’t been there when she read the Book. Hey eyes followed it to a hulking shadow that was sprawled on the opposite side of the brazier and it clicked.

“Miraak!” 


	16. The Floor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> \--Hello all! Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it, and if you don't celebrate it I hope you have a great day anyway!   
I haven't been posting my musical inspirations for the last several chapters because I have found great Spotify stations that have been my muse. The "Battle Music" playlist and the "Elven Harp" playlist have both been my backdrops recently. They're great for setting the mood, 10/10 would recommend!   
Thank you as always, enjoy!--

“Miraak!” Her voice cracked and it was barely audible at all, the word sending fire into her throat. She crawled to him, and immediately pressed the heels of her hands into the gored flesh of his chest with the healing spell at her palms. The edges of the bloody gash glowed slightly, but the skin was not knitting back together. Miraak gave no resistance, no indication at all that he was even alive. Lylenna leaned in close, listening for any sound or signal that she wasn’t too late; that she wasn’t fighting another losing battle. She was getting frantic, she heard nothing. No heartbeat, no breathing, _nothing._

She was beginning to panic, her hands were shaking and her vision swam with stars as breath became harder to come by. _But why, Lenna?_ Her body froze. _You gave him so many chances, and he chose to fight. He _deserves_ this._ Shaking hands flitted away from the man's chest. Lylenna stared wide eyed at the man before her, the man who had tried to kill her on several occasions. It would be so much easier to just leave him, save her magic for herself, and let this battle end there and then. Her eyes glanced down to her blood-covered hands, the dark leather almost black. She looked to Miraak again, and saw in her mind's eye an outstretched hand disappearing into a void of eyes and writhing tentacles. She heard the concealed longing in his voice ..._and I can return home._ He had, at least for a moment, considered her words atop the summit as he hesitated before making the first move.

_Damned Daedra! Damned Dragonborn! Damn it all!_ Her jaw clenched and the muscles in her neck twinged in protest. Her magic was weak and she had no reserves in her state. Lylenna cast her eyes around the room frantically, surely there had to be _something_ useful the cultists had left!

The pale blue bottle on a nightstand across the chamber was precisely what she was searching for. One bloodied hand shot out towards it, burnt orange magic swirling around her wrist as she gave just enough of a tug that the telekinesis yanked the potion from the nightstand. She barely caught it, sinking her teeth into the cork and pulling it out ungracefully. Drinking hurt too, no surprise, but the potion was enough for her weakened reserves to bolster some.

She flew back into her healing, panting with exhaustion as the dark stain on Miraak’s robes continued to grow steadily. Lylenna grit her teeth and poured all that she had into the split of his wound and with agonizing slowness it began to knit back together. _Come on, you stubborn bastard, heal damn it!_ She silently cursed him, cursed Hermaeus Mora, cursed herself as the wound creeped back together. Her head began to spin as she pressed down, but she could feel the gash lessening beneath her palms with each passing moment.

His eyes flashed open and he convulsed beneath her, nearly throwing her off. He gasped, choking on blood and coughing wet, heaving coughs that reverberated in her elbows. Miraak madly searched the darkness, and Lylenna was struggling to hold him down. _Fucking—stop moving!_ She willed as hard as she could. He was tearing open all of her hard work! His wild gaze finally stopped on her, and he growled out something unintelligible that Lylenna guessed was a stream of curses directed at her. Desperately, she leaned in harder with her spell.

Miraak howled, his Voice sending showers of dust around them. Thankfully he also blacked out and was still as death once more, save for his haggard breath. The potion was wearing off, and Lylenna thanked every benevolent deity that she could think of that the gaping hole in his chest had resisted his thrashing and finally closed.

It was not a pretty scar, and not her best work by any means but at least it was no longer gushing blood. It was dark red, and ragged around the edges, but it was closed. Lylenna prayed that he had a matching scar on his back as well. She tried to roll him on his side to check, but _damn it why are you so huge!_ She grunted to herself, barely able to lift his shoulder off the floor. Her own exhaustion returned with the loss of adrenaline, and she let his shoulder fall back to the floor.

_ I just have to hope it’s healed on his back too…_. With her knees once again in contact with real, solid ground on Mundus, she breathed the deepest sigh she could bear and slumped over. Her eyes flitted between Miraak and one of the beds on the other side of the room. _How am I going to get him over there?_ She thought bitterly, groaning inwardly at the prospect of moving his heavy bulk. _Well, we will just stay here on the floor then. _

She sat for several long minutes, ignoring her bruised and battered body’s protests at being on the hard stone without any relief. Whatever the case was, the fact remained that Miraak was still barely breathing next to her. His breath came in wet gasps that sounded far too similar to the death rattle that she vividly remembered belonging to her distant past. She planted her blood-covered hands onto the ground, and squeezed her eyes shut. _Meditate, Lenna, magicka!_

Finally, she felt enough of her magic return and she returned to the daunting task of healing the deep internal damage. Her fingers splayed out over Miraak’s bloody chest, slipped under his sodden robes that were beginning to dry. _Divines, you’re a mess, _she thought. She felt the warm spell work its way into his ribcage once more, the puckering scar glowing once more as it and several other fresh wounds began to close up more solidly. Ribs popped back into place and the man groaned in his unconsciousness. Lylenna searched his face, it was pinched into a tight grimace behind a long and ragged and dark beard.

_ DIVINES, you’re a MESS!_ She frowned, vexed by the amount of blood on his face that his mask had stopped from dripping away. Lylenna realized with a start that his mask was nowhere to be seen, not even a piece of it that had broken off. She also realized that _her_ mask was missing in action. Her scowl intensified and she must have leaned into her hands because Miraak groaned again pitifully. “Sorry,” she barely managed to whisper, and dumped the rest of her magic into him once more.

She was pleased that his breath no longer carried the unsettling rattle or haggard rhythm, and she sat back on her hands and knees once again. Now that he was in no immediate danger of dying, she could actually take a moment for herself. She cast a small healing spell on herself that cost her no magicka, and it took the edge off the profound soreness in her bones and muscles. The deep bruises on her wrists from her dream were still there, as was the bruising of her throat. If she had to guess, it too would not be affected by her normal healing magic.

_ I hope that heals on its own,_ she lamented. Unsteady and numb legs were not a good combination and standing up was a challenge, but she managed. Fumbling around the chamber yielded a small handful of potions, and Lylenna hoped that the red bottles meant they were healing. She sniffed the contents of one such bottle: _indeed, that is an alchemical mixture._

She was not good at alchemy.

She worked her filthy bracers and gloves from her hands and wedged her little finger into the bottle and collected a bit of the thick liquid. Bringing it to her lips, she tasted the bitter liquid on her tongue, completely unable to distinguish anything but mildly ashy and an unpleasant jelly textur—_WAIT it’s the ASH HOPPER JELLY!_ She shuddered.

It was actually a healing salve.

She collected a somewhat clean looking bowl, and a handful of cloth strips from a cabinet and limped back over to Miraak’s unconscious form. She knealt down and unfastened the cork of her water flask and emptied its contents into the bowl. Taking a piece of Miraak’s ruined robes in one hand, she fiddled with the layers haplessly until she gave up trying to unstick them from one another.

The translucent blade of the dagger that should have been her end formed in her fist, and she attempted to shove that thought away into Aetherius as she delicately cut away at his robes. She released the spell and the dagger faded away into nothingness now that its usefulness had ended. A strip of cloth was dipped in the bowl, and Lylenna began the arduous task of cleaning off the dried blood.

Now that the world was back to the way she knew it to be, and she was not battling slimy monsters with too many arms or unsuccessfully attempting diplomacy with an adversary, she had a moment to actually _see_ said adversary. Lylenna studied the unconscious man before her as she gingerly worked the cloth over his skin. He was incredibly gaunt, his skin a sallow pale yellow; it clung to his features in a way that reminded her of the draugr, but with arguably more life within it. His hair was dark and dingy and it hung limply to about his shoulders, and his beard was just as unkempt.

Lylenna grazed over the tender scarring, and Miraak inhaled sharply. The right side of his face was peppered with several scars that split his lip, bridged his crooked nose, and cut odd shapes across his cheekbone and his eyebrow. _Those are old wounds,_ she noted, and followed the symmetrical slant they all carried to his shoulder. With gentle scrubbing, a mottled and faded burn scar snaked its way from his shoulder to his chest.

_ That is…arcane fire_. She knew those scars well. She had inflicted wounds similar unto her foes and bore a few—albeit smaller—scars that looked just the same.

She washed and dressed Miraak’s wounds as best she could, ripping pieces of an old shirt that had been left in a chest into strips of gauze. He remained unconscious as stone, and she thanked the divines for that. He was too heavy to move on her own, so she collected some bed furs and a pillow and set him up before she collapsed. Lylenna was sprawled across the floor not far from Miraak, exhaustion finally taking her in its grasp. She gently snored away, not caring that she was on the floor either.


	17. Awakened From The Void

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> \--Hi everyone! I hope everyone is having a lovely Holiday. Thank you as always for reading, I apologize if this chapter seems lame or...something. As is true of everyone, life is hurling all sorts of stuff my way, namely in the form of a roommate worthy of one of those clickbait-y websites. "How I got back at my terrible roommate! Stories of ripe revenge!" For clarity's sake, she's the terrible one, not me. Maybe I should write that out! It has been a while since I had a chapter from Miraak's perspective, but I'm not sure if I will keep this as a regular mechanic. We will see.  
Dovahzul translations at the end!--

He had lost. In all his great power and skill, he had been bested by this diminutive mage. The song he had heard for nearly thirty years a haunting crescendo in his ears, finally drowning out Mora’s words as Miraak felt his life force slipping away like water through his fingers. He had been so close, only to lose it all now. The last thing he remembered before he succumbed to the sucking void of darkness was the _Laat Dovahkiin_ leaning over him with the most feral and rebellious grin on her unmasked face as she twisted a spectral dagger into her own heart. Miraak tried to form words but his strength was bleeding out of him with his blood and he was dragged into darkness.

Then there was nothing. Nothing but the cold void of what he only assumed was death and the faintest whisper of the song as it was whisked away by an otherworldly wind. He couldn’t breathe, it felt as though something was crushing him beneath heavy stones. Miraak floated through the void for what seemed like endless time--or perhaps it was only a moment but he could not tell—before the feeling of something warm pressing into his chest and pulling him towards…something caught his attention.

The warmth spread through his chest, humming gently with energy as it circulated through his chilled form before it began to grow hot. Miraak felt the incalescence radiate into a searing, prickling heat and in the darkness of the void he grit his teeth and hissed through it. Without any warning, the weight on his chest was dragged away and he was pulled into a blinding golden light, sucking in a deep breath that sent ripping pain into his torso as he hacked up blood. Panic gripped him as he opened his eyes to see a hazy ceiling illuminated by a dim reddish glow and an unbearable pain that racked his entire body. He could feel the center of the golden light at his chest and scrambled to escape its fiery claws before he focused on a darkened form above him.

_ Bo gut nol zu’u, sunvaar!_ He slurred, but the figure drove its hands deeper into his gashed chest and _by all the gods_ did it hurt. He vaguely remembered his own voice ringing through the room before darkness seeped into his vision once more.

He was drifting again, aimlessly it seemed through a gray haze with a dull throbbing that emanated from his very bones. There was no song left, and he tried to call it back to him if only to have something familiar amidst this gray. _At least now I can hear myself think,_ he mused. Onward he floated, his feet impacting with nothing without a sound. A roiling feeling within him told him that his dragon soul was becoming restless, as if he were in danger. Ahead in the misty gray stood a figure, and Miraak quickened his pace.

_ You there,_ he called out, _who are you?_ The figure made no sound, nor did it turn in acknowledgment. It stood stoic with a dark cloak drawn around its body, and Miraak had not seemed to make it any closer despite the fact that he was nearly sprinting now. He stumbled, somehow tripping over his own feet and landing without any contact but when he looked back up the figure had vanished, and he was alone. Miraak pushed himself to his knees and clenched his fists, eyes shut tightly as he willed this grayness away, keeping his focus on the dull pain that ebbed and flowed through him.

Like the golden light, the pain surged through him more intensely the longer he meditated on it, and it was an ache that was nearly unbearable but he pushed through it. The numbing gray mists melted away, leaving behind the warm darkness of his subconscious and the overwhelming pain in his body that made breathing burn his lungs like dragonfire and crushed his torso in a vicegrip.

“_Kul rahhe, krii zu’u sinon_.” He coughed, his voice hoarse and just barely audible. He tried to bring a hand to his spinning head, but found that his limbs were as heavy as lead. He growled a frustrated groan, fingers weakly curling into fists at his sides. Slowly, as the world around him stopped spinning, he forced his heavy eyes open. Wherever he was, it was dark but dimly lit by a dying brazier not far from where he was resting.

Miraak blinked, the slightly reddish glow reflected in his eyes. He stared, transfixed upon the warm flickering light. Gods, how long had it been since he had the luxury of a true fire? So focused, he was, that the sound of footsteps barely registered before the brazier roared back to life at the snap of fingers behind him. He flinched, ribs popping and he grimaced, the sudden illumination making his eyes sting. Something was set down with a _thunk_ followed by the footsteps as they shuffled around the space. Miraak felt a presence seat itself to his right, and the sound of wood being dragged over the stone grated on his ears.

The presence hovered over him, he focused on breathing through the constriction in his chest. Golden warmth shined behind his eyelids as hands gently pressed onto his skin. Though the magic was warm, it sent shivers down his spine and he tensed. Miraak heard a soft gasp and the hands retreated abruptly, taking the healing spell with them. He shifted slightly and opened his eyes to find emerald green staring back in shock at him.

The woman he had seen before, fleetingly in a dream that he hadn’t thought to be real, and then once more as she snarled defiantly at his former master now sat delicately on her heels at his side. She tilted her head, a thick copper braid slipping over her shoulder as she drew herself back, nearly knocking over a wooden bucket beside her. Her eyes stood out harshly behind dark purple and yellow bruises, and her lip was swollen.

“You’re awake!” She rasped, and Miraak noticed too the ugly bruising around her neck…they were a pattern he knew well. He was suddenly very aware of the room around him, the slightest flickering of the shadows cast by the fire taking shape into twisting, writhing tentacles but disappeared when he turned to see. “Easy, easy there,” a hand rested on his shoulder, but all he could see were eyes and ink. A pulse of healing magic chimed for a moment, drawing his racing mind back to the woman at his side. “Don’t move so much, you’ll tear open your wounds.”

_ Ah, right…._The phantom feeling of a sharp tentacle ripping through him made him shudder, and he gripped the furs. _What?_ He thumbed the foreign fabric, _where….?_ As if she could read his mind, the _Laat Dovahkiin_ interrupted his pondering:

“You’re not in Apocrypha,” she whispered with a semi-self-satisfied smile. “Welcome back to Nirn.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bo gut nol zu'u, sunvaar! (Literally Fly far from me, creature) Get away from me, you demon!  
Kul rahhe, krii zu’u sinon. Good gods, [just] kill me instead.


	18. Argumentative Aurora

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> \--Hi all! Hope all is well. My erratic posting schedule should sort itself out when my terrible roommate is finally evicted, so I apologize for the irregularity of it.   
Song for the chapter:  
Healing Elves, Derek and Brandon Fiechter
> 
> See end notes for Dovahzul translations, thank you as always!--

Miraak was awake, and Lylenna was face to face with pitch black eyes that stared at her with the fire of battle despite the fact that the man was nearly immobile at present. “You’re not in Apocrypha, welcome back to Nirn.” She was very thankful that he did not reply with anything more than a slow blink; trying to explain anything right now would likely make things more complicated. Lylenna winced slightly, explaining would also mean talking.

The silence was heavy between them, making her shift restlessly. Taking the bucket of snow, Lylenna scooped some out into a cast iron and with a soft flame spell melted the ice in the pot. She dared not make eye contact. _This was a mistake, HUGE mistake Lenna, why did you do this?!_ Her lips stretched into a thin line, tugging at the newly healing split but she did not care. Miraak continued to glare up at her wordlessly. Set with her task, she focused intensely on the dented exterior of the pot and sighed. She had meant to snag some tankards from the kitchens on her way back down.

She abruptly stood, turned on her heel, and marched to the chamber doorway. “I’ll be back,” she shot back over her shoulder, and disappeared around the corner. Back up the winding hallways she stomped, just as she had after she woke up on the floor several hours ago. The darkness of the temple was oppressive and stifling and after Apocrypha all she wanted was to see the sky. Lylenna bypassed the kitchens, lost in thought as she found herself in the temple’s tunnel-like foyer. She ran her hands along the door, tracing the effigy of the dragon’s head carved into the heavy panels, and shoved the door open.

It was still the swirling blizzard that had greeted her upon her first venture to the surface, and she shivered as the wind whipped around her. The sky was also beginning to darken as the sun set behind stormy gray clouds. “What have you done, Len?” she whispered into the wind. _You have made it awkward, is what you’ve done,_ came her conscience’s scathing reply. _You brought him home, but at what cost? _Lylenna huffed, her misty breath swirled away in the wind, and she shuffled back down the spiraling ramp and into the temple.

She snagged a pair of tankards from one of the tables, the mugs surprisingly empty and devoid of small spiders. There had been a few in the bucket, much to her chagrin. _Is it not my doom-driven destiny to save people? The One They Fear, here to save mortal-kind. What’s one more sorry bastard in the world to me? He’s Dragonborn too, he can—_She stopped. Memories of colleagues suddenly suspicious of her power, enemies turned “friends” as they tried to use her, and how she had felt when the world suddenly thrust its problems onto her all flashed before her. _I am not alone!_ If anything, she could get him to pay his debt to her.

Lylenna practically skipped the rest of the way down, rounding the corner into the bedchamber and accidentally catching the doorframe on her spaulders with a clack. Miraak’s head whipped around to face her, and she had little time to dodge the _FUS _he barked her way. It sent dust-covered books from the shelf beside her instead. She held her hands up, tankard in each, and frowned at him. He had managed to push himself into a seated position but judging by the way his already pale skin looked even more drained, it had not been easy.

“It’s only me,” she said, and his shoulders slowly released their tension, but the terrible glare of disgust remained. Lylenna padded to the pot of water and poured a tankard for each of them and offered one to Miraak. He eyed the cup, fingers reaching for the metal slowly, as if it were a skittish animal and not a tankard. He took it from her and took an experimental sip. Lylenna smirked gently at the way his gaunt face seemed to light up a little as the cool liquid touched his lips. She took a sip herself and cringed at the bland taste. “Would you—” she was interrupted by her own dry cough, “ugh, tea?” she finally managed.

Miraak pondered a moment, and then shook his head, swigging a bit more from the tankard. Lylenna nodded curtly and grabbed her bag from a nearby table. Shifting through it, she brought out a small pouch and withdrew a handful of dried green leaves and a scrap of porous cloth. She bundled the leaves loosely in the cloth and dropped it in her tankard, heating the metal in her hands until the cup was steaming and fragrant. She savored the hot tea, letting its warmth ease her painful throat while she leaned contentedly back on the table.

“Where have you brought me?” She was startled by the voice she heard, Miraak’s usual deep and booming baritone was hushed and wavered slightly. He seemed to notice too, as he grimaced at the sound of his own voice. Lylenna cast her eyes to the ceiling and around the dark chamber, walls crumbling in places and cobwebs accumulating in the corners despite the cultits’ recent occupation. Her hands clasped tighter around the warm mug.

“Home,” she said, and took another soothing sip. “This is your temple. What remains of it, at least.” Miraak glared into the depths of the tankard, catching his reflection in the water within. He was just as haggard as the structure that had once been his grand home. He nodded tersely.

“Why did you do that?”

“Why save you?”

“_Geh, ruth mey_. I was prepared to kill you. But you….” Miraak’s hand came to the scar beneath his sternum.

Lylenna took another swig of her tea, the flavor becoming bitter. She gingerly removed the pouch of soggy leaves, worrying her bottom lip. _Tell him outright or let him find out? _She sighed. _He deserves to know._ She opened her mouth, but clicked it shut again. _He would not want my pity._ “You’re going to help me finish what you started.”

Miraak glared at her, or she thought he did. It was rather difficult to tell where he was looking as his eyes were solid black. “What _I _started?” he dropped the tankard to the stone next to him and made to clamber to his feet but was stopped by a splitting jab in his chest. His palms flickered a glowing gold, but his spell did not leave his hands. He growled through choking breaths. “And just _what _could that be?”

“Alduin.”

“_Niid.” _he growled.

“You are Dragonborn, the First?” She needed more tea. Or perhaps some matze. “I found nothing about you. Not in any book, nothing. I do not know where you come from nor how you can be Dovahkiin, but only a Dragonborn can slay Alduin.” She shrugged. “Two is better than one,” _and _I_ would prefer Alduin over Mora any day. _

Miraak was quiet for a long moment, the silence broken only by the crackling of the fire in the brazier and the occasional sipping of tea. He ran a hand through his hair, recoiling at the feeling of it between his fingers. He was no longer Mora’s prisoner in Apocrypha. He was _home_, but instead of the triumphant return he had envisioned for his freedom, he had this dark shell of a room that he was only just beginning to recognize as part of his home. _Has it truly been as long as I feared?_ “Then why fight?” _You were ready to kill _me, he bit the words back.

“I did try to speak,” Lylenna replied, jaded sarcasm laced through her words. “But no one ever listens to Lenna,” she muttered, finishing her tea with a dainty sip. She looked up from the tankard to catch him scowling at her—it seemed to be his default expression. Setting her cup down, she approached the goulish looking man and squatted next to him. Even slouched as he was, she was eye to eye with him and he was visibly displeased with her proximity shift. “Relax. I don’t bite.” His pitch eyes narrowed at her.

Her hand reached out, golden healing at her fingertips that had just barely brushed his skin when he grabbed her wrist with surprising speed. Lylenna gasped and instinctively wrenched her hand away, snarling at him like a startled cat. Miraak sneered a challenging glare back at her. “_Dreh nii haalvut zu’u, vahdin_.”

“What, do you—”

“I said, do not touch me.”

“Then have fun healing the hard way,” she spat.

Miraak angrily forced himself to his knees and then to his feet, ignoring Lylenna’s protests. The world tilted precariously beneath him as he did, and it felt like he had been kicked in the head as well as stabbed through once more. He staggered to the wall, pressing his palm to the cold and dusty stone and leaning into it. He knew these walls, he knew which way was _out_ and traipsed his way along the steady stone all the way to the dark metal doors with no sign of the irritating woman behind him.

“Where are you going, it’s a blizzard out there!” came her voice from the chambers behind him.

Lylenna watched him stumble away with contempt. _Some gratitude,_ she mused. _I didn’t have to fix the hole in your chest. I didn’t have to try to make you more comfortable. _She fixed herself another tankard of tea, muttering to herself angrily as her hands shook around the mug. The sound of heavy doors sliding open echoed from afar, the main doors above her. _Freeze out there, for all I care. It’s not like I drained my magicka reserves for you. _Her fingers tightened around her tea as she eyed the ruined pile that had been his robes. Did he really think that he would be alright in that blizzard in only his trousers and boots? Lylenna’s jaw set. _Alright, **fine.**_

She grabbed the thickest furs she could find in the room along with the hot tea and trudged after Miraak. The wind was _howling_ now, the winter gale was viciously ripping through the arches surrounding the Tree Stone with such force that Lylenna could hear the snow colliding with the stone over the eerie whistling. The sun had set, and it was dark now. She almost did not see Miraak as he stood braced against an archway. He stood awkwardly huddled against the stone but with his face turned skyward.

“Miraak!” Her hoarse voice was not loud enough. She felt the wind tugging at her robes and threatening to throw her off balance. Climbing the icy steps carefully, she came to a slippery stop a few steps behind him. “Miraak,” she tried again. He tensed, tilting his head to acknowledge her with a glare as icy as the wind.

“Why did you follow me? Go away.”

“Have you any idea what I went through to get you back here?” She coughed, “You’re not about to freeze to death so easily.”

He half turned to face her, in the darkness he could hardly make out her figure standing mere feet behind him. She closed the gap between them and offered up a bundle of furs to him. The way she was expectantly looking between him and the dark shape of the furs…confused him.

“What is this?”

“This is snow, Miraak. It’s cold, in case you had not noticed.”

He huffed, his breath misting briefly before it was swept away on the biting wind. He hadn’t noticed the cold, he supposed. He was used to cold, and had a natural resistance to it but the woman shook the furs at him and would likely continue to harass him until he took it from her. With a scowl, he grabbed the plush fur from her outstretched hand and wrapped it around his shoulders.

“Here, this too.” She offered him a tankard of steaming liquid. “The tea helps.” Begrudgingly, he took the drink too and would dare not admit that it indeed felt good to have something warm in his hands. The howling of the wind was beginning to wear on his senses, and he fidgeted against the archway.

The two stood in relative silence, observing the snow as it swirled by them and down the darkened mountainside below. A particularly strong gust of wind sent him swaying and he was thankful that he was leaning on the stone. The redheaded Dragonborn shivered next to him and drew her hood up as the wind pushed her forward half a step.

“Could you have perhaps waited for the sun to rise?” she whined. “Some welcome-home, here’s a snowstorm.”

Miraak rolled his eyes, not giving her the satisfaction of a smirk. “_Niid._” He said flatly.

The snow was beginning to pile on their shoulders, sticking to their fur and cloth wraps. “Th-this is t-t-terrible,” the woman stammered. Miraak found some satisfaction in her discomfort. _Serves you right for following me. _She huddled into herself, using the other leg of the arch as a windbreak. He had to agree with her, though. Apocrypha’s putrid green sky would be preferable to this gale under any other circumstance.

Miraak sighed softly, he could hardly remember what the true sky looked like; what the stars and the moons looked like. The woman suddenly straightened, and Miraak felt the surging power of the thu’um from her as she tossed her head back:

_ LOK VAH KOOR!_

Her shout was carried skyward with the reverberating sound of something like a battle horn blasting, the shockwaves of it made his skin tingle and his hair stood on end as the night quieted around them. He watched stunned as the harsh winds vanished and the snow began to flutter gently to the earth before it completely stopped.

Miraak stared at the sky, the clouds dissipating to reveal shining starlight and a red-gold Masser rising on the horizon in its full glory. A gentle, chilly breeze took hold of the furs, making it ripple around him like waves as he stood transfixed on the clear expanse above. He heard a quiet chuckle from his side, the tiny Dragonborn drawing his attention from the heavens. Her face was mostly hidden under her hood, but she caught his eye with a glimmer of a knowing look and a small smile halfway hidden. She gestured back to the sky, and as she did purple and green lights split the skies, illuminating the land he had not seen in millennia.

And it was more beautiful than he remembered, the quiet night more peaceful than he ever imagined possible. The aurora lazily danced across the sky, and for a moment Miraak thought he could hear the call of the song in their luminescent arcs. Breathing deeply, he dared not close his eyes for fear that this was a dream and he would wake up in the darkness. The slightest scuff of boots on icy stone reached his ears, and he turned to find the Dragonborn had vanished.

Dark eyes searched the circular courtyard, but the woman was nowhere to be seen; he could still hear the sound of boots and bits of armor and cloth swishing nearby. A flurry of snow cascaded down from the high arch and upon its apex stood the woman. He started, _what? When did she…? How?_ and watched in stunned wonder, mouth agape as she reached her hand up to the sky, fingers splayed out to touch the silky lights. She was silhouetted there, and Miraak heard himself gasp.

She remained there, hand reaching for the light, for what seemed like eternity until clouds began to gather once again. Stars flickered out behind gray, and the glowing tendrils began to fade away as the wind picked up. When the sky became dark, she shimmied back down the stone arch and all but vanished in her storm gray robes in the growing blizzard. The doors to the temple creaked open, but did not shut, and Miraak let the wind cut through his hair for a moment more before he followed her back into the temple.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Geh, ruth mey: Yes, [you] damn fool.  
Dreh nii haalvut zu’u, vahdin: Do not touch me, woman  
Niid: No


	19. You're Not Excused Yet, Bastard.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> \--Hey all, I have emerged triumphant over my crazy roommate and now I have a great story to tell for the rest of time. Here's the next chapter for you! Thank you everyone, y'all make this worth writing. Anybody catch the Star Wars reference in here???
> 
> Musical inspiration:  
The Tale of The Tongues, Malukah  
Bonnie at Morn-Amy's, Traditional, Jackie Moran, Ensemble Galilei
> 
> Comments are amazing and appreciated!--

Lylenna was perched on a bed when Miraak finally rounded the corner into the chambers with the furs still loosely wrapped around him. She had removed her ice-covered boots and her outer layers and was busily ripping apart some brown robes that had been in one of the chests. Miraak eyed her with perplexed suspicion. She glanced up over the hem of the fabric that she held at arm’s length and back at the material with a slight nod, then took another set of robes and began cutting it apart too. Miraak meandered around the fire, extending a hand over its warmth for a moment before dropping heavily into another bed across the room. He groaned slightly, jarred by the impact.

Lylenna’s glowing dagger halted its assault on the stitchings, and her eyes flicked over to him. He was curled on top of the bed, with his back to her. She saw the slight glow of healing magic flicker and die out again, saw him hit the bedframe in frustration. _Still exhausted,_ she thought. _I’m not surprised. _She neatly folded the cloth on the bed beside her, rising to her feet with a gentle sigh. She crossed the space in a few steps and hovered at the foot of his bed. Her fingers drummed on the wooden frame, and his dark eyes reflected eerily back at her over his shoulder.

Her hands held her healing magic at her sides, a silent inquiry in her arched brow. Miraak scowled back at her and tugged the furs closer around himself. With a twitch of her fingers, the magic was gone and she instead picked up the ash hopper salve from the table and dropped it on the bed next to him. Bare feet carried her back to her bed where she halfheartedly resumed her mutilation of the cultist robes, watching Miraak from the corner of her eye as his hand breached the dark furs to take the shiny bottle and unscrew the cap. Gingerly, he spread the reddish salve over his ribs, softly hiding a hiss as he pressed too hard onto a bruise before he sat up in the bed.

She produced a sewing needle from her bag and began stitching together the robes she had destroyed, the gray thread standing out against the earthy brown leather. Netch leather, she guessed. It wasn’t pretty, nor was it particularly protective, but at least it was big enough now that the two sets were sewn together to fit the massive man who sat staring at her from across the room. Lylenna slowly looked up, her eyes hooded beneath her brows, and she thought she saw his gaze waver.

“What are you doing, _Laat Dovahkiin_?” He eyed the robes sprawled over her lap.

“Well, can’t have you wandering around Solstheim without clothes, especially when you look like _that_,” she replied, gesturing to all of him. “I’ll have it stitched by morning. Rest now, we’ll leave for Raven Rock by noon tomorrow if the weather clears.” She herself wanted to rest; her throat still burned, and she knew the bruising was still an angry dark color but she did not want to stay in the dark temple for any longer than she had to. It still held traces of Hermaeus Mora’s power, and the shadows made her uneasy. It was like the Prince was watching them still from somewhere deep in the cavernous labyrinth and she was not about to have a repeat run-in with him.

He looked perplexed, like he was expecting a different answer, but his brow knitted together and he half-nodded her way before he settled back into the bed. Lylenna watched as he adjusted himself diagonally on the bed, his long legs hanging off the end even still. She could have sworn that the man she battled in Apocrypha was broad and bulky, but this Miraak was bordering on sickly thin. The pallor of his skin, coupled with his wild hair and beard and black eyes, made him look frighteningly haunting. Lylenna’s dovahsos pitched, she felt it cry out mournfully in her chest. _He won’t want your pity, _she chastised herself again, _but it is likely that he won’t want your help getting cleaned up now that he’s conscious._

Lylenna continued her labor, the robes binding together with each pass of the needle. It took her another hour before it was completed. She eyeballed the length of the sleeves; one was slightly shorter than the other and she tutted at her carelessness. _We’ll have to find him something more suitable in Skyrim. This’ll have to do. _She glanced over at Miraak, who was out cold, and rolled the robes up and tucked it under her arm. There was an enchantment table in here somewhere, she recalled, dragging out the only soul gem she had from her bag. It was a small lesser soul gem, but something was better than nothing. She wandered out from the bedchambers and meandered through the ruins, finding the enchantment table a way into the temple. She activated the runes, their shining aqua green light reminding her only slightly of Apocryphal skies and placed the components down on the table.

She hummed, the vibrations making her throat itch but for whatever reason when she hummed or sang, her enchantments always seemed to be stronger. _Another question for Paarthurnax_, she mused and placed her hands on the table. The robes shimmered with the glowing dust of the soul gem as she imbued the fabric with regenerative properties; magicka and stamina respectively but she knew the weak gem would provide little for him. She was putting the finishing touches on the enchantment, melodiously surging her magic when from afar she heard a howling cry.

“Shit!” she cried, her heartbeat suddenly spiking with panic.

She grabbed the robes and took off as fast as she could manage through the temple, skidding to a halt just shy of a tall, gaunt figure in one of the hallways. In her hand danced a shock spell, but it quickly fizzled when the light illuminated fur-wrapped shoulders and dark eyes. Miraak looked down at her, and he looked as though he had seen a ghost.

“Divines, what the hell was _that?_” Lylenna panted, “I nearly blasted you back into Oblivion! Do you--”

Miraak shushed her with a wave of his hand, his head tilted slightly and his eyes surveying the hallway. She blinked and listened too, hearing nothing but the usual sounds of the ruin.

“Did you hear that?” He asked.

“Ah, no? I heard you yell, what am I supposed to be—”

“Never mind.”

He cut her sentence off, turning without a second glance her way. Lylenna was left in confused silence as Miraak returned to the bedchamber. He was an odd one, she surmised, to hear something and wake up from a dead sleep with that much ferocity. _If I ever sleep again, it will be a miracle. _She shook her head and followed him. Depositing the robes on the table, she sighed longingly at her empty bed. As she settled in, the thought occurred to her that he might not be trusted. She placed a few wards on the ground around the bed as a barrier, and then nodded off to the quiet noise of the brazier.

She was surprised that she slept through the night without Miraak yelling again or any of her wards being tripped. In fact, she woke to find Miraak already dressing himself. With a yawn that rivaled a dragon roar, she stretched and worked the sleep from her muscles. Miraak said nothing, but he nodded somewhat appreciatively at her as he fastened the clasps of the robes and his belt. He suddenly looked confused, holding an arm up and inspecting the fabric.

“Hmm?” Lylenna mumbled sleepily, recalling her wards and dragging herself from the warm furs. “Something the matter?”

“_Niid…_you enchanted this?” he asked. Lylenna quirked a brow, pulling her outer tunic over her shoulders and letting the thick gray and purple fabric drape around her. She took her breastplate, frowning at the torn leather strap that caused the thing to sit askew.

“Yes, I did.” _Is he going to question everything that I do, _she groaned miserably in her head. One deft motion and she had the ripped leather removed and had a replacement band in place. Miraak merely grunted in response. _Eloquent,_ she retorted. Lylenna secured her armor and fastened her sash across her torso, fiddling with the belt until it sat just so. She stood twiddling the metal and leather, an awkward silence hanging between them as she waited for Miraak to collect himself. Tea was always a good buffer, she figured, so she refilled her empty waterskin with the fragrant brew and slurped it as politely as she could.

Finally, when the silence was overbearing and Lylenna could feel the uncomfortable anxiety threatening to bubble over within her, she cleared her throat and slung her bag over her shoulder.

“Ahem, we should get moving. If we leave now, we will reach Raven Rock by sundown.”

Miraak tightened a clasp on his boot and pitched his haunting glare up at her. She saw within his features an indignant fury, unused to being ordered around, no doubt. He began to say something in dovahzul, but then he stopped himself and instead stood abruptly. As gaunt as he was, he still towered over her and she had to remind herself to stand her ground as he half stomped, half prowled past her and out into the temple. Lylenna hoped he didn’t catch her slight scurrying to catch up to him.

She trailed behind him all the way to the doors of the temple, her strides double to keep pace with him. “Wait!” she quipped from a few feet back. He breached the doors, making them screech horribly on the ground as they were flung open. Lylenna nearly collided with him as he stopped in the doorframe. “Hey!”

The storm had passed, and through the open doors sunlight poured into the darkness, and Lylenna needed to shield her eyes from the intensity of the light as it reflected off the snow in a dazzling display of nature at its finest. The snow had piled up in drifts around the Tree Stone, and there was not a cloud in the sky to be seen. She ducked past Miraak, ascending the ramp and leaving her footprints in the fresh snow. She turned, not hearing his footsteps behind her, and found him still frozen in the doorway.

“What,” she huffed, “You’re not concerned with storming out into a blizzard, but you won’t come out now that the sun’s up?” The cold air was making her throat crack again. Miraak frowned at her, but slowly emerged from the doorway and pushed past her in the opposite direction of Raven Rock. “Where do you think you’re going?” she called after him. “Town is this way.”

“I do not plan on following you, _Laat Dovahkiin_,” he said. “Your problems are not mine.”

Lyenna stamped ahead of him, rounding to a halt to jab her finger up at him: “_My_ problems?” she hissed, “My problems wouldn’t _be_ problems if _someone_ hadn’t neglected his purpose in the first place.” Cold fury gripped into Miraak’s soul, and both Dragonborn could feel the others’ _dovahsos_ rear its head. He snarled down at the incessant woman.

“I thought you knew nothing of me, _Laat Dovahkiin_. How could you know my purpose?”

“As you said, you’re the First Dragonborn. Dragon Wars, Merethic Era, the Elder Scroll; I don’t recall seeing you amongst the ancients who banished Alduin!”

Miraak recoiled, his rage spinning with confusion that only succeeded in pissing him off even more. “_Saw?_” he echoed, “You _saw_ Alduin’s banishment? You read a Kel?”

“Yes, I did! I found _the_ Scroll they used and I read it at the Time Wound.”

Miraak heaved a tight sigh of exasperation, holding up a hand to silence her. He searched her face, she looked far too young to have truly done what took his people many decades to achieve, much less reading the very scroll that Felldir, Hakon, and Gormlaith had used in Alduin’s banishment. Miraak found himself at a loss for words, letting action prevail as he sidestepped around the angry woman.

“You don’t have much of a choice in this matter,” she jabbed at him. “If Alduin wins, we all perish, and every day you laid in wait in Apocrypha would be for nothing.” Miraak spun back to chastise her, but the motion sent him straight to the snow with a pained growl. Lylenna instinctively jumped back at the sudden motion, reflex demanding shock spells in her hands. They quickly dissolved. Miraak knelt in the snow, pressing his fists into the frost and putting off an aura of such anger that Lylenna remained at her safe distance. He attempted another healing spell that had more gusto than his last few attempts but his magicka reserves were still low. The glow died out, and Miraak pushed himself to his unsteady feet.

Lylenna scanned him over; while his magic was returning, his physical appearance seemed to be deteriorating. He noticed her stare.

“What,” he growled.

Blinking away her frustration with the man. Irritable as he may be, he still held her pity. And she needed him alive and healthy.

“I—Miraak,” she hated the way her voice wavered between pleading and pity. “Would you please let me heal you? Properly?” The man scoffed and set off down the steps heading north west, slowly but with purpose. “Miraak!” _Ugh, you’re begging now, Lenna?_ “Wait,” she commanded, and to her surprise he stopped.

“What is it _now_?”

“There’s nothing that way for you. Snow, ice, and the Skaal; mind you, they’ve put a high price on your head—not to mention mine, now that I’ve brought you back instead of killing you. You’ll find nothing out there, the shoreline ends at the Sea of Ghosts and that’s it.” She thrust her hand out towards him, an alternative forming in her mind. “We take down Alduin, and you’re a free man. Do what you will, go wherever you wish; I won’t interfere. Alduin comes before all else.”

Miraak eyed her outstretched hand, and she could tell he was weighing her words. His gaze met her resolved stare, and she gave her hand a slight flourish, _shake on it, you bastard._

“Interfere? With me?” he tested.

“Never again. Help me, help me help you, make this mess…” she pointed to where he bore the freshly healed scar on his chest and back at hers “…worth the trouble we went through.” Miraak visibly bristled at her words, the idea of being oathbound to the woman was making his dovahsos reel in defiance. Still, she continued: “Or we’re all doomed.”

If Miraak clenched his jaw any tighter, he might break his teeth. He glared down his crooked nose at the woman with as much disdain as he could muster, and she stared back with steely resolve and just as much contempt. Gods above, he _hated _everything about her in that moment. He hated that she was the one who set him free from Mora, he hated that she saved his life, and he hated the fact that she was _right_. She stood with her hand still outstretched, the dark leather of her gloves contrasting against the white of the snow, and he released a tense breath that he was holding.

“I help you defeat Alduin.” She nodded. “You let me go free.” Another nod. “And I never see your face again.” A squint and a nod. Miraak chuffed, “These terms are vague and unconvincing, _Laat Dovahkiin_. I—”

“Lylenna.”

“…What?”

“My name, it’s Lylenna. Or Lenna. Stop calling me _Laat Dovahkiin_ please, it’s becoming annoying.”

Miraak’s eyebrows arched high, incredulously staring at this perplexing and insufferable woman, ‘Lylenna’, and shook his head.

“Fine, _Laat Dovahkiin_,” he purposely dragged the title out, grating on Lylenna’s nerves. “I will agree to your terms.” He clasped her forearm in a grip that was only slightly too tight, sneering down at her with a frighteningly cold look. “But you will regret not thinking this through.”


	20. Children, please.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> \--Hi all! I apologize for this chapter, I am in the thicket of holiday chaos. I hope it's bearable! Dovahzul translations at the end as always, and as always, thank you to all who read this story!--

Regret indeed. Lylenna trudged through the ashy snow-slush with Miraak trailing behind at a snail’s pace. She was getting irritated, he would stop and examine any little thing; she was certain he was doing it to piss her off. The temple was two days’ journey from Raven Rock as it was, but despite his best efforts to appear unphased Miraak was balancing precariously on the edge of passing out at any moment. When he once stood with perfect posture, he now stood slightly tilted and was constantly sickly pale.

Lylenna had done her absolute best to patch him up with magic, despite Miraak’s protesting. He had started so violently when she applied her first round of healing magic to him that he had nearly shoved her into a snow drift. No matter what she did, he still seemed…off. Instead of heading directly to Raven Rock, she had decided to bring him to Neloth. She figured if anyone knew how to heal Daedric sickness, it was the man who did nothing but study magic and Daedra. She noted the cluster of boulders she had used as shelter as they passed, calculating the sun’s height on the horizon as it shone through the distant silhouette of the mushroom towers.

She turned to check over her shoulder and found Miraak several paces back, leaning on the boulders. His eyes were fixed far beyond her, out over the sea and towards Red Mountain. She followed his gaze, finding nothing but the land and sea beyond. Back and forth she looked, from the majestic scenery to the spidery man against the rock, and she tramped across the span between them.

He ignored her as she approached. Lylenna came to a halt and regarded him with a raised brow.

“Why did you stop? We can make it to Tel Mithryn by this time tomorrow if we keep moving.”

Miraak blinked, suddenly aware of her presence. He eyed her with annoyance and folded his arms over his chest. He had been deep in thought, attempting to recall if Solstheim had been an island when he last walked the earth. In response, Lylenna gestured towards the towers and waited for him to start walking before she spun on her heel and proceeded forward.

“I seem to recall a ‘Raven Rock’ being your intended destination,” he grumbled from behind her. Lylenna hummed tunelessly and rubbed her bruised throat gently.

“We need better healing,” she croaked.

Miraak scoffed, and Lylenna could feel his eyeroll without even needing to see his face. She also did not need to see his face to know that he was slicked with sweat despite the chill, and she knew that his veins were showing through his skin a dark and unnatural black.

“And you’re a mess, you’ll frighten off the locals with that face.” Her jab was met with stony silence and a ball of fire hurling past her head, the heat of it kissed her face as it exploded against a tree not far ahead. She whirled around, a ward already formed at her palm. A second and third fireball ricocheted off her ward, and the magic threatened to sputter out at each impact. The deep hum of her ward harmonized with the high notes of the shock spell that she had readied in her other hand as she took aim at Miraak.

Miraak, who was suddenly behind a tree and nowhere near the direction that the fire came from.

“Move, _ruth mey_!” He growled. Lylenna’s ward faltered as her confusion broke her focus. She sidestepped a moment too late, and her ward barely clipped the firebolt that struck her across her dragonbone spaulder, wrenching her shoulder as the spell went up in a blinding shower of orange embers. Three sets of glowing red eyes were zeroed in on her from a few yards back. 

Lylenna gritted her teeth, readied a chain lightning spell, and let it fly. The sparks danced from ash spawn to ash spawn with blinding precision, splitting each at its heartstone core with a horrific shriek and a cloud of ash and cinders. Lylenna threw her arms down, ending her spells with a crackling of lightning and a stomp of her foot in the ash. Her hackles raised, and she angrily brushed charred bits of fabric from her armor.

Miraak leaned out from behind the tree, checking to ensure that the smoldering remains were not reanimating before he was startled by a tiny mage’s furious sigh.

“_Divines and Daedra,_” she cursed, stomping off towards Tel Mithryn. “When all of this is over, you can _have_ this miserable island for all I care!” Miraak let his teeth click together and scanned the surroundings. He hadn’t been mistaken, Solstheim truly was an island, and he was certain that it hadn’t been millennia ago.

“What were those creatures?” he asked the slowly shrinking woman.

“Ash spawn.” She gritted out over her shoulder.

“…Which are, what exactly?”

“A blight, something that I thought I took care of, annoying. Take your pick. I’ve got more.”

Miraak closed the gap between them, falling into step just behind Lylenna.

“And these ash spawn,” he began slowly, enunciating each word as one would to a child, “They are bad, scary monsters?”

The dark glare that she shot back at him made him smirk, which only made her glower even more.

“Don’t patronize me, I am not a child. Do not speak to me as such.”

He folded his hands behind his back, “When I ask something, respond with something more useful or do not speak at all.”

Lylenna wanted to smack that smug look off his face, she felt her blood begin to roil. She gave him her best withering glare and doubled her pace. He had long enough strides to keep up with her without any strain, and she heard him scoff behind her.

“I should leave you like you are. I shouldn’t take you to get yourself fixed up.”

“Oh, _Laat Dovahkiin,_ you wound me.”

“Hah! I _saved_ you, First Dragonborn.”

“_Geh hi drey, mey daar hi los. Hin folaas lost ni krii zu’u. Zu’u ni fen nihon hi ruz._”

Lylenna bit her tongue, not wanting to bicker with him. It was petty of her, but she wanted to have the last word. _Don’t say anything, Len. Ignore him. _She released a heavy, exasperated sigh and set her eyes on the eastern horizon. Clouds were gathering, faintly glowing in places where lightning flashed within their dark gray depths. Miraak took her irritated silence as a victory and reveled in her muteness. “That’s better,” he said. _Oh, he did not just--_

“Gee Lenna, thank you for not obliterating me with lightning! And thank you for killing the ash-zombies!” Her voice dripped with sarcasm and irritation. _This is going to be a long, very long quest, _she thought darkly. “Oh, you’re most welcome, Miraak! Good thing I saw the ash spawn, otherwise you’d be history.” Lylenna heard him half-growl behind her and heard him take a breath to reply with something, no doubt just as childish. She thrust her hand out, level with his chest to bring them both to a halt, and beckoned for him to lean down. He didn’t, but she narrowed her eyes and hissed at him regardless:

“If this is going to be how it is, then expect nothing more from me, Miraak. You and I have a job to do, yes, but if something happens to you on the road do not expect me to restrain myself again. I was _this close_ to hitting you with that spell and you would have deserved it. Save the petty banter, it doesn’t suit either of us, and it will make this a hell of a lot harder than it needs to be.”

Miraak’s infuriatingly passive expression held through her scolding, and Lylenna knew her face was turning more and more red with anger the longer she looked at him. They would never reach Tel Mithryn at this pace. With a flourish of her wrist, a swirling blue portal opened and she watched his face shift from smugly ambivalent to restrained horror as a blue-flaming, skeletal steed stepped through the portal with an unnatural neigh. She extended her hand to the abomination, and it nuzzled into it affectionately without taking its glowing eyes off Miraak, who had taken a few surprised steps away from the pair. Lylenna hopped and swung her leg over the horse’s back, astride its fiery mane without fear.

“Get on.” She commanded. The horse pawed the ash, stirring up blue embers as it did so, shifting impatiently from hoof to hoof.

Miraak just stared, and he wished he had his mask. Had anyone else been wearing the expression that he was, he would have laughed at their cowardice. Lylenna glared coldly down at him, the unearthly blue of the flames reflecting off her ebony armor and casting sharp shadows over her face. He dared to admit to himself that she looked terrifying in that moment, but he dared not to let it show any more on his face. He shook his head, fighting to return to his neutral expression as the horse and rider both huffed in unison.

“_Niid, _I will not ride on…whatever _t__hat_ is!”

Lylenna tutted, he wanted clear explanations of things? Fine.

“_That _is Aarvak, and I acquired the honor of his summoning in the Soul Cairn. He’s an immortal steed, trapped between the mortal plane and true oblivion. As you can see, he is on fire, and he is not a patient beast,” she deadpanned, much as her tutor had when she was a child. “Get on,” she repeated, lowering a hand for him.

She would be lying if she said she wasn’t enjoying the discomfort she sensed coming off Miraak in waves. Served the bastard right. His gaze flicked between her and Aarvak, and she felt the horse begin to restlessly twitch. Miraak shook his head again and stepped back farther still. Lylenna kicked Aarvak’s sides gently, making the horse rear forward and come back down with a heavy stomp directly in front of Miraak. He threw his arms up, protecting his face from the shower of fiery ash and hooves that came dangerously close to him, barely biting back a yell. He caught the Last Dragonborn’s icy glare, trying to still his pounding heart.

“You won’t last the night out here alone, First Dragonborn. For the last time, get on.”

Much as he hated to admit it, she was probably right. He was drained, and his head spun. He was too slow, and if more of those ash spawn showed up he likely would be caught off guard again. Distant thunder rumbled, and the angry tension between the two Dovahkiinne was tangible. With a steeling breath and a glowering snarl, Miraak grabbed her wrist and she hoisted him up behind her on the demon-steed. Aarvak whickered and skipped, adjusting himself to the weight of the second rider before Lylenna gave the command “go”, at which the horse took off through the ash as if he were on smooth dirt.

Lylenna had to muffle a satisfied chuckle as she noticed her high-and-mighty passenger gripping the horse with far more intensity than was needed; she basked in Miraak’s tenseness. The land flew by at speeds not attainable by any living horse, Aarvak leaving burning blue and purple hoofprints in his wake as they careened toward the towers on the far horizon. In truth, she was not a great rider, and preferred walking over riding despite the obvious speed difference. Aarvak was a noble steed, albeit an unusual one, but he was stubborn and impatient and refused a saddle. Much to her disapproval. 

The pair rode in silence, the hours flying by as quickly as Aarvak could run, until they slowed to a jarring trot that threatened to shake both of them off as Aarvak approached the outskirts of Tel Mithryn. Lylenna coaxed him to a halt and turned to Miraak over her shoulder. “Now you can get off.” _Get off quick, my ass is killing me,_ is what she wanted to bark. Miraak stiffly clambered off of the horse, knees nearly buckling as his feet met the ground. Lylenna slipped off the other side, her footing wobbly and her legs incredibly sore. Aarvak tossed his fiery mane and disappeared with another otherworldly shriek.

“Welcome to Tel Mithryn,” she said, gesturing to the towering mushrooms with a weary sigh. “Let’s go see Neloth.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ruth mey: damn fool  
Geh hi drey, mey daar hi los. Hin folaas lost ni krii zu’u. Zu’u ni fen nihon hi ruz: Yes it was, fool that you are. Your mistake was not killing me. I [would] not have to listen to you then, [at least].  
Dovahkinne: plural of Dovahkiin (which I just discovered had a plural form!)


	21. Did he say wood saw?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Hi! So, welcome back. What a time to be alive now, right? So, a little bit about me and this long hiatus: I am a zookeeper and a student, so my days are suuuuuuper jam packed. Also, with the whole world freaking out and shutting down (especially here in the States, people are actually hoarding toilet paper and other essentials), I actually have some free time again! Without further ado, more Miraak and Lylenna.

Lylenna ascended the ramp to the door of the main tower with a swirl of ash behind her long robes whipping in the wind. The tempest on the horizon was now directly overhead and threatening to unleash more snow onto the island, something that Lylenna was quite tired of. _As soon as I am back in Skyrim, I’m going to Falkreath. All that green, the rain, and the streams. Enough of this ash!_ she mused as she pushed open the door on its well-oiled hinges. Stepping to the center of the glowing sigil, she turned to Miraak in the doorway. He surveyed the narrow foyer and leaned on the doorjamb to peer up into the tower.

Lylenna caught his perplexed look with a small shrug. She tapped her foot in the dead center of the sigil and floated upwards with a whoosh. She watched his head snap up to follow her, his mouth slightly agape. The magic gently deposited her at the top of the tower, and she had just enough time to hop out of the way as the spell dropped Miraak somewhat ungracefully where she had just been standing. He teetered, and for a moment she thought he might pitch backwards down to the floor far below, but he righted himself and pushed past her off the platform and into the tower. Part of her then wished that he hadn’t caught his balance.

Satisfied that he was far enough away from the edge and from her, she stepped off the platform too, and found Neloth on the other side of the tower busily dissecting something that she hoped was a Dwemer machine and not another live spriggan while Talvas perked up at the pair’s arrival. The apprentice hurried over to them with a look of relief etched upon his face. His hand darted out and then jumped back to his side, where he clenched it into a fist before shoving both into his robe pockets. Miraak rolled his eyes, this boy was simpering and he found it irritating. His stomach was twisting from riding horseback, and his legs felt like wet parchment ready to give out under him; who did this boy think he was to--

“Lylenna! You’re back! I was--well, _we_ were worried and when you didn’t summon a portal here, we thought you’d failed. Not that I thought you’d fail, I never thought you would, but I— Azura’s Curse, you look terrible! What happened--” The mer fidgeted in place, not quite sure where to look. A dusky blush was creeping up his ears.

“Hello Talvas,” Lylenna interrupted him gently. “We need to talk to Neloth, may we pass?”

Talvas stammered something that sounded roughly like a “yes ma’am,” and scurried out of their way. Lylenna cleared her throat with a raspy cough and Neloth dropped whatever odd tool he was tinkering with. The wizard spun ‘round and beelined for her with unquestionable authority.

“Hold still, let me get a good look at you,” he reached out to take her face in his hand, but she lightly swatted his hands away with as little irritation as possible.

“Neloth, what are you looking for?” _Why do you always survey me like this,_ she wanted to jab.

“Incipient madness. Loss of self-awareness. Black spots in the whites of the eyes. Any of the documented indications of Hermaeus Mora’s permanent influence.” His eyes scanned her up and down, pausing momentarily at the bruising that was peeking out from under her collar and very evident around her eyes. He frowned slightly, distressing as the bruising was, it was not among the more deadly traces of Mora’s touch. After a brief pause, he gave a small nod: “Hm, no. You look fine. At least, no different than when I first saw you.”

Lylenna scoffed, rolling her eyes, and made to fire back when instead a dark chuckle cut off her response, and she resisted the powerful urge to squabble with Miraak. Instead, she snapped her fingers and pointed from him to a nearby chair, “Go, sit.” He raised a brow, but begrudgingly dropped himself into the chair with a grunt. _I cannot believe that worked,_ she thought. _He must really be in a bad way._

Neloth gazed curiously at Miraak, as if he had only just now noticed the additional person with Lylenna. Miraak observed the Dunmer’s questioning stare from the creaky wooden chair and glared at the old wizard. The momentary silence was broken by the slight whirring of magic surrounding the various tables that decorated the center platform and by the sound of Talvas coughing awkwardly behind a bookcase. Neloth began a thought, Lylenna could see the questions forming in the wizard’s mind and observed as he opened and shut his mouth several times before finally speaking. “As it were—”

“Neloth, you don’t need to worry about me,” she interrupted, not wanting to have him press her for more about her state. Neloth’s lips pressed into a thin line and he half-scowled at her.

“I wasn’t _worried_. Just _interested,_” he tried to cover the slight waver in his voice, but she could hear the deflection back to his normal self-centered attitude. The great Wizard Neloth worried for no one, after all. “I don’t get to observe first-hand many people who have spoken to Hermaeus Mora.” Lylenna cast a quick sideways glance to her travelling companion, who was slumped in the chair with his face hidden beneath his palm.

“Don’t you want to know what happened to Miraak?” she asked.

“Wha? Oh him. Well, I assume you killed him. Or Hermaeus Mora turned on him when you looked like the winning bet.” Neloth took in the awkward grimace from Lylenna, and the murderous scowl from the strange man in his chair. “Or a bit of both.”

“Tch,” Miraak rasped. This elf truly couldn’t be that dull. Miraak made to reply thusly but found that the air in his lungs felt thick and heavy, like liquid. He sucked in a breath to try to clear the feeling, but the room just spun around him. Thoughts were starting to become fuzzier and words sounded more distant than before, and his head was pounding.

Lylenna crossed her arms around her stomach, fixing Miraak with a look that made his already pitching stomach clench: pity. “Don’t,” he growled.

“Neloth, can you help him?” she asked, not taking her eyes off the scraggly man, who was looking more pallid by the minute. “I did what I could, but….” Miraak’s lip curled.

There was a long pause as Neloth studied Miraak from afar, making Lylenna shift from foot to foot in the uncomfortable silence. Finally, the old wizard raised a questioning brow at her. “This is truly him?” Lylenna nodded. “And, he is here why?”

“We’ve a job to do. Unfinished business.” She replied. Neloth looked unconvinced. “Neloth! What difference does it make? I need his help, he is Dragonborn like me. And how often do you get to observe someone who’s spoken with Hermaeus Mora?”

“Oh, fine.” He crossed the distance to the occupied chair and scrutinized Miraak. “Let me guess, you feel as though you’ve been on the worst ship ride of your life and you can’t breathe.” Miraak glowered up at Neloth questioningly, but after a moment nodded. “Stabbing pain in the ribs?” Miraak nodded again. “And if I do this?” Neloth clapped his hands together crisply, the sharp crack causing all occupants of the room to jump but made Mirrak’s hands fly to the sides of his head with a groan. “Right.” He launched into a volley of further, rather invasive rounds of questioning.

Lylenna scuffed her toe on the floor a bit, unsure of how to best tell Neloth to hurry up and get on with it without pissing him off. She could feel Miraak’s anger rising, but it seemed to be buffered by the sheen of sweat and the obvious discomfort in his angular face. She tried to flag Talvas over, but the apprentice was conveniently, and perhaps smartly, nowhere to be found.

“Nel,” she finally interjected. The mer abruptly halted his query. “Could you please, uhm, could you—” she made a “hurry up” gesture, and it seemed to click with Neloth.

“Ah, right, yes. Well,” He strode back over to Lylenna. “There’s nothing that can be done.” Lylenna felt dread grip her soul and the color leave her face.

“What? Neloth, no, there _has_ to be something you can do,” she cried, the wisps of desperation in her voice making her cringe inwardly. “If anyone knows what to do with him, its you.” _Neloth I swear to all the gods, you had better know what to do. I need this bastard alive,_ she yelled in her head. She wanted to grab the old mer by the shoulders and shake him a bit, the damn wizard could not fall from his self-placed high pedestal now.

Neloth tilted his head, the tips of his long ears drooping slightly as he pondered for a moment. “There is but one way that I _might_ be able to help. That’s _might,_ as in _maybe_—” Lylenna’s hands darted into a quick _well, what are you waiting for_ shrug that Neloth sighed at and ignored. “—but it is not a guarantee that it will do any good. It’s an incantation of my own creation, meant for cleansing myself after interacting with Daedra, but with a few adjustments it might work to at least sever the tactile link to Hermaeus Mora’s realm.”

Lylenna’s fingers folded into a steeple below her nose. Having understood all of those words separately but not necessarily in the order presented, she turned to Miraak. He looked somehow even more miserable than before, but managed to eye her irritably. “Miraak, what do you know of this tactile link?” His brow creased, and he rolled his neck a bit with a shrug. Shaking his head slightly, he pinched the bridge of his nose with one hand and managed a half-assed wave towards Neloth with the other. _Helpful. Really, really helpful Miraak. Thank you. Now I have YOU to decipher too._

With a frustrated sigh, Lylenna leveled her hands at Neloth. “Look, I know enough about magic and you to know that you aren’t going to use any sort of spell that resembles anything like what I know for this. What can I do to help?” Neloth’s ears perked up a bit as it seemed an idea struck him.

“Talvas!” he shouted, and from seemingly nowhere the apprentice scurried to the scene. “Fetch me three grand soul gems, a box of candles, my wood saw, and my tea.”

Lylenna caught Miraak’s eye, _did he really say wood saw…?_


	22. Any Rock Can Be A Banishing Rock If You Throw It Hard Enough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Music for this Chapter:   
Before the Storm; Glenn Stafford, Neal Acree, Sam Cardon, David Arkenstone, Clint Bajakian, & Jason Hayes  
The Flood; Christopher Beck
> 
> Thanks for reading!

Miraak felt the waves of nausea threaten to pitch him out of the chair and grit his teeth. He could feel the toxicity of Apocrypha ebbing and flowing through his veins as it tried to drag him back to the plane of Oblivion, only this time it would bring him there dead for Hermaeus Mora. _Gods, never again,_ he thought as he watched with his face in his hand the two Dunmer and the _Laat Dovahkiin_ move furniture around and draw an ornate sigil on the slightly spongy floor.

The older mer Neloth was muttering to himself, his stream of verbal consciousness broken occasionally to bark orders and spell instructions at the others as they prepared this elaborate ritual space. The shapes of the sigil on the floor vaguely reminded Miraak of something, but he couldn’t quite place where he had seen something similar. His head hurt too much to think about it. The _Laat Dovahkiin_ was placing several smaller soul gems at each pointed end of one of several triangles in the chalked emblem, a look of set and practiced determination on her face as she planted each opalescent gem in its proper place. Miraak shook his head slightly, at the risk of throwing his equilibrium out of balance.

_ What’s she playing at…?_

He studied the trio’s interactions, and it dawned on him that this was the most people he has been around in—_how long has it been?_ The way Neloth commanded the space with his abrasive attitude reminded him of old masters and Miraak suppressed a shudder at the way Neloth would snap his fingers at the others. Every time he snapped his fingers, Miraak could feel a slight flare of emotion from the _Laat Dovahkiin_, a feeling he could not quite place. Faint as it was, it was still present. He looked down at his hands.

His veins were dark, blood sluggishly fighting its way through his body against the oily toxins that sapped his very body from him. The makeshift brown robes that she had sewn together nearly swallowed him up, and he grit his teeth at how frail he looked even to himself. _Weakness is to be destroyed, _the echoes of masters long since passed rattled him. He pressed his thumb into a tender spot on his wrist to shake the memory. The bruising from Mora’s tentacles still coiled around his body like dark snakes. Whatever plan this wizard had to break the tether that he spoke of had better work. Miraak’s fathomless eyes cast a piercing glare from beneath his sharp brow and messy hair towards the trio, who were now sawing a silvery-wooded staff into three equal lengths.

“Don’t put deep holes in my floor, Talvas!” Neloth barked as Talvas shoved the lengths of silver wood into the semi-soft floor. The apprentice stammered a quick apology and took the saw from the _Laat Dovakiin’s _hands before gently placing it behind other tools in the workroom. Miraak was just happy it wasn’t going to be used on _him._ Before he could think to control it, he felt himself heave. With a spluttering cough, he retched up dark inky bile that burned his throat like fire. The foul taste in his mouth made him almost heave again, but he clamped a hand over his mouth.

“Neloth…!” There was a restrained tenseness to the _Laat Dovakiin’s_ already shot voice, an urgency that made Miraak’s skin prickle uncomfortably.

“Right, that should do it. Fetch him,” Neloth quipped back.

Talvas and the _Laat Dovahkiin_ hurried to his sides. Miraak shrugged them both off him, standing too quickly but fighting the tilting world to remain upright. He walked as dignified as he could to the center of the circular main sigil, within a triangle of three grand soul gems. Neloth, Talvas, and the _Laat Dovahkiin_ each took their positions in concentric circles of their own at the triangle points that contained the smaller gems. Miraak was painfully aware of a pair of dark green eyes boring into his shoulders as the woman focused on his swaying form. He glared at her over his shoulder, but his malice was met with a stone cold and level gaze. Miraak quickly regarded the Dunmer in turn with a nod.

“Talvas, Lenna, on my command,” Neloth’s voice was sure and bereft of its annoying arrogant cadence. Miraak could finally hear the telltale confident tone of a man well practiced in his art and some of the tension within him abated. The three readied their magic, feet placed elegantly heel to toe. Miraak breathed in an unfulfilling breath and braced himself.

“Begin.”

At Neloth’s command, the sigil and all of its components began to glow brightly. The pinkish light surged inwards from each caster to the grand soul gems at his feet and refracted back out to the silverwood staves and shot to the smaller soul gems. The staves took hold of that power and directed three potent beams of magic directly into Miraak’s chest. He had just enough time to see the three mages arc their glowing palms gracefully in unison before the light became too blinding to see beyond. Alchemical portents and spellbooks rattled on nearby tables, the clinking of many pieces of glassware against metal battled with the humming sound of the spell itself for volumetric supremacy. The whole tower seemed to be vibrating in time with the frequency of the spell’s powerful hum, and Miraak could feel that power deep in his bones. For a moment it felt as though the darkness within had dissipated; Miraak breathed a tentative breath. 

And then it felt like his body was being pulled in three different directions at once. The sensation of this magic was foreign and uncomfortable, but not overly painful. He could feel some of his former Daedric master’s influence begin to release its grip on his soul; it slithered away from the brightness like leeches. Shadows squirmed and snaked upon the walls in Mora’s distorted image, oppressive and omnipresent as the spell slowly worked its way through the cursed sludge within Miraak. The pink light seeped into his very being, forcing the darkness of Mora’s magic from him until the feeling halted abruptly. It felt…blocked. A deep, ancient wrath clawed at him, resisting the cleansing light. The feeling of pressure building rapidly in his chest made it impossible to breathe and in a moment of panic, his knees buckled beneath him, forcing him out of the direct light.

“No!” cried Neloth, “You must stand! Quickly!”

Miraak frantically searched their faces; Neloth’s pained and worried scowl, Talvas’s frightened grimace, and finally he came to stop upon the _Laat Dovakiin. _Her face was tilted skyward, with her arms held low and out by her sides like the others. Miraak blinked in shock as the bruising around her neck writhed and convulsed as if it were truly Mora’s tentacles. For the briefest of moments her eyes seemed to glow, but Miraak blinked again and it disappeared.

“_Get. Up.”_ Her voice was unrecognizable, a raspy hiss like a serpent. The intensity of those two words forced him to his feet and back into the beams of light as if she had Shouted the order. If there ever was a feeling similar to his Bend Will shout, Miraak would bet that this is what it felt like. Mora’s influence resisted once more, and with greater ferocity. Miraak planted his feet and imposed every scrap of willpower he had into disrupting the poisonous influence, drawing power from his inner _dovah_.

“_I. have had... ENOUGH of you,” _The _Laat Dovakiin _spat, “_BE GONE, you wretched DEMON!” _The entire tower shuddered beneath her voice, and Miraak gasped as the vice grip of Mora’s influence suddenly relinquished its hold and flushed from him. With a final roar, the _Laat Dovahkiin_ brought her hands together with a resounding clap that broke the spell’s influence in a flood of energy that threw Neloth and Talvas from the sigil like ragdolls. The shadows dissolved with a terrible screeching as Mora was banished from the _Dovahkiine._ Miraak dropped to his knees like a sack of rocks but reeled at the feeling of weightlessness that followed in the wake of being free of so many, many years in Mora’s clutches.

The dust settled in the wake of the wave of magic, leaving Miraak knelt between three soul gems as black as the void. He sucked in a full breath for the first time since setting foot back on Nirn, and by the _gods_ did it feel good. Miraak inspected his hands and arms; no longer were his veins stark against pale and sickly skin, instead they were their proper greenish tinge beneath his lightly olive skin. His hands shook with a thrumming energy, was it excitement? Relief? Miraak didn’t know, he hardly remembered what those felt like, but maybe this was it. A pair of ebony and ivory adorned leather boots appeared in his periphery, as the _Laat Dovahkiin_ stepped into the inert chalk circle, stopping just short of his personal space. 

“Well, how do you feel?” Her voice was lacking the raspy edge that it had held for the past few days, and Miraak barely inclined his head her way. The ugly bruising around her throat and eyes had vanished, and her eyes were somehow a deeper shade of green now. Miraak also noted that her accent was more pronounced without her needing to stage whisper most of her words. “Oh,” her mouth twisted into a disapproving frown, “Your eyes are still black….” She trailed off her sentence, the rest of what she might have said was cut off by Neloth and Talvas picking themselves up off the floor with uncoordinated groans and huffs. She shuffled away to assist them. Miraak frowned, his fingers absently traced his sternum as he delved deep within himself to see if he felt any traces of Apocrypha’s sludge. As far as he could tell, there was nothing left. Perhaps…perhaps the eyes were permanent. _I can live with that, I suppose._ It was a begrudging acceptance, and even to himself he sounded more than just a little disappointed, but it was better than the alternative.

Miraak reached out towards the jet crystals, their jagged points were oddly alluring while somehow radiating a cruel familiarity. His finger had nearly brushed the peak of the termination when Neloth’s huffy command cut through the air.

“Wait, don’t touch that!”

Miraak snatched his hand away, and he swore he saw something move within the facets. Neloth grumbled and hobbled over to the sigil. “Those contain the very essence of Mora’s influence upon you! One false move, one touch, and it could be released again! Move!” He gestured for Miraak to get out of the way. A piercing glare told the old wizard that he would move in his own time, and Neloth visibly bristled but stepped back from the circle. Miraak carefully unfolded his legs from beneath him, taking care to not kick the soul gems as he did so. All three other occupants of the room blinked in surprise.

“I knew it!” the _Laat Dovahkiin_ exclaimed.

Casting a sidelong glance at her, he saw her survey him up and down. It was…disconcerting, the way she was looking at him. She observed him with a gleam of triumph in her eyes that made him feel like a prize horse being examined.

“…Knew what?” he squinted suspiciously at her.

“You _were_ taller before!”

Miraak blinked, stepping from the complicated lines of the sigil and away from Neloth, who swooped in with a pair of cloth wrapped tongs to collect the soul gems. “_Niid? _I have always been this tall!”

The _Laat Dovahkiin_ shook her head furiously. She gestured to their considerable height and shoulder width difference. “No, you definitely were smaller until just now. Look at your robes!”

Now that he looked, she did seem smaller than she had been for the time he’d been around her. The robes that he had been swamped by mere minutes ago now fit almost too snugly around his shoulders, and the different length sleeves were now especially obvious. He had been that sickly thin, all of his atrophied muscle mass had been returned to him with the removal of Mora’s influence. A short, quiet ‘huh’ was all he had as a response before he suddenly felt the overpowering sense of uselessness as Neloth and Talvas returned the living area to its rightful order around the two. He frowned at the _Laat Dovahkiin, _who was still studying him with some interest.

“Need something?” he gruffed at her, folding his arms across his chest. Her head tilted slightly, but she turned her attention to watch the Dunmer with a look of awkward unease on her face.

“I should probably help them….” And without waiting for an answer, she grabbed the nearest sets of chairs and placed them back at the proper table, leaving Miraak to loom off to the sidelines. When the tower had been returned to its usual controlled chaos, Neloth waved the _Laat Dovahkiin_ over to him.

“You two, go clean yourselves up,” he snapped. “You both smell like death. Begone.”

Miraak sneered at the wizard from across the room, but the _Laat Dovahkiin _actually broke into a lopsided grin at the words.

“Divines yes! I have not had a proper hot bath in forever!” She gestured for him to follow her to the precipice of the arcane lift. He found her excitement to be rather juvenile at first, but as the thought permeated his mind, the more he thought he understood her childlike glee. A hot bath? That was something else he had forgotten the feeling of. The woman practically leapt over the edge, the magic rushing her to the bottom of the tower in the blink of an eye, and he followed as casually as he could though his instincts were to _not_ step out into thin air.

“No more freezing cold dips in the Harstrad,” he caught her muttering to herself as she pushed the door open. The storm had dwindled to a mere drizzle and breeze, and the humid warm air slammed him like a Lurker’s fist. “Ugh, wet ash, scrape that off your boots before it dries and hardens,” she said. He regarded the instruction with a squint. Miraak noticed for the first time that there were several smaller mushroom homes attached to the main tower as she pointed to one of the two on the left. “You go see Drovas, he’ll let you use his bath. I’ll be in the apothecary.” And she sauntered off with surprising speed to the house to their right, leaving him standing in the ash.


	23. A Much-Needed Bath and a Message

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLOOOO. Y'all thought I had forgotten about this story, didn't ya? ;P HA! Honestly, I have been sitting on this chapter for a HOT MINUTE because I wasn't happy with it. I finally decided "Ima post it 'n just deal with it". They can't all be winners. I hope everyone is staying safe and wearing masks and video chatting with mental health professionals! 
> 
> Completely, absolutely super random fun fact for y'all: There is a bird species, called the Guam Rail, that was extinct in the wild until just recently. Several zoological institutions were responsible for their captive breeding and reintroduction and the zoo that I work at is one of them! And I get to work with them! Look them up, they oddly remind me of avocados. :D

Hot water and soap were two things that Lylenna treasured most when she had the opportunity to return to settlements. She shifted with barely-concealed giddiness from foot to foot as Elynea finished filling the tub for her, tossing in several alchemical salt mixtures into the steaming water with a knowing wink. The anticipation was killing her, the bath just looked so inviting. And warm. And _fragrant._

“Thank you, Elynea,” Lylenna breathed, the floral aroma of the water vapors wafting her way. “It always seems that I’m dumped in your care; I cannot thank you enough for-“

Elynea waved her off, shooing the younger woman behind the wooden room divider with a light chuckle and a wry smile. “At least this time you’re not completely exhausted, falling into bed in full armor and sleeping for two days!”

Lylenna felt a slight blush of embarrassment creep up her cheeks, and without her old mask it was plainly evident to the elder mer. Thankfully, blessedly, Elynea only smiled kindly and shuffled over to the kitchen to chop some ash yams, leaving Lylenna to disassemble her armor and robes. As she stripped, she folded each piece of cloth and stacked them all neatly together at the end of the partition. Finally, she slowly sank into the warmth of the tub, up to her chin in sweet-scented indulgence.

“How’s the water?” Elynea called from across the room.

Lylenna sighed, replying with a blissful “HmmmMmm.”

She dipped her hair under, the water changing the strands from copper to muted burgundy. As delicately as she could, she worked her fingers through her tresses with intent to destroy any tangles that might have escaped her braids over the past who-knows-how-long. Satisfied when she could pull her fingers through with little resistance, she reached over for the bar of soap and a cloth and set to cleansing her skin of the grime that clung to her like moss on a stone.

With a flick of her wrist, the soap suds and dirt were magically whisked from the water and into a bucket at the side of the tub, leaving clean, heavenly water once again. She leaned back against the edge of the tub, letting her head drop back as she lazily traced the surface of the water with her ring fingers. She let her mind wander, and it drifted back to the successful ritual in the tower. That had worked almost without a hitch, she realized. _Odd, things _never_ just…work! _She thought. More to herself than anything else, she shrugged, little waves dancing away from the movement. _I could get used to things just working. Don’t get too far ahead of yourself, though. _

She turned her wrists over before her, noting the lack of bruising with a smile. She felt great! Neloth had begun to explain this ritual to her as they moved furniture out of the way, and she had marveled at his combination of the restoration school with the alteration, with a dash of mysticism thrown in for flavor. She made a mental note to ask him more about that when she got the chance. The room’s softly-lit warmth cradled her just as much as the water did, but it’s comfort did not distract her wandering mind for long.

Lylenna absently ran through her to-do list in her mind, grimacing occasionally at the less-relaxing-sounding tasks ahead of her and instead shifting her focus to meditation. She inhaled deeply, held for a moment, and then released her breath in a controlled huff. She repeated this until her mind had gone absolutely blank, letting herself sink into the gray middle as she had sank into the tub. It was there in that state that she remained until the water around her had gone tepid, before a sharp rap on the divider roused her from her state. Coming out of the fog, she blinked several times to bring the world back into focus.

“What is it?” she called.

To her surprise, Drovas’s voice breached the divide.

“Ehrm, Lenna, Neloth told me to relay a message. A letter, from Raven Rock.”

Her brows furrowed. Raven Rock? What news could possibly be coming from Raven Rock? “Well, what’s the news, Drovas?”

“A raven returned from the mainland with a letter addressed to you. Should I, uh, leave it here?” She heard him shift restlessly on the other side of the divider.

“Sure, I’ll take a look as soon as I’m finished.”

There was a long pause, and Lylenna was unsure if Drovas had something more to say. Without so much as a farewell, he dropped the letter in a rustle of parchment and turned on his heel—the partition had a slight gap underneath that she could see under. The steward grumbled to himself as he hurried out the round door: “Shouldn’t’ve left the fetcher unsupervised, probably turned the place upside down….” Lylenna’s brows pinched together, confused, but she was more curious about the letter than Drovas’ odd comment.

At some point during her meditation, Elynea had taken her clothes to be laundered and left a simple, soft Dunmer outfit in a faded navy blue folded over the top of the divider, along with a towel. Lylenna stood from the cooling tub, sloughing off as much water as she could before stepping completely out. The towel was slightly rough, but she almost preferred it that way, it dried her off more quickly. Donning the tunic and breeches, she peeked her head around the edge of the divider to discover the hut empty.

Her satchel was still draped over the chair where she had left it and she fished out a comb that she promptly began to work through her drying hair. As she combed, she eyed the letter on the table. The front was addressed to her in Tolfdir’s neat script, the sight of the familiar font made her heart ache for Skyrim once more. Her comb stilled, and she reached over to grab an apple from the bowl on the table and to break the wax seal on the parchment. Taking a good, crisp bite of the tart fruit, she was wont to remember why she had sent for Tolfdir in the first place…. It had been at least two months since she had sent the raven to Winterhold, shortly after she arrived on Solstheim and so much had happened.

The letter began not in Tolfdir’s usual roundabout and casual way, but with a few short sentences that made her choke on the bite of apple she had been chewing:

_ Lenna, the college has been sanctioned to closure per Ulfric Stormcloak’s order. Winterhold is under his control now, and he is holding public hangings in Windhelm every Fredas. There is talk of it happening in Winterhold soon, and we have been offering sanctuary for the city’s non-human citizens, painting a target upon all our backs. My apologies for not finding anything about Miraak._

_-Tolfdir _

_3rd, First Seed_

She let the rest of the apple fall to the wooden table, and snatched her satchel from the chair. She felt ill, the icy chill of horror and fear running down her spine. _Gone too long, you were gone too long, they’re in danger_, her thoughts raced by in a panicked frenzy and she stumbled over her own feet on her way to fling open the door.

The chilly and humid night air felt more like Apocrypha than Nirn, the darkness surrounding her and amplifying all of her senses. _Calm down calm down stay calm Lenna! _She followed the lantern light to the main tower doors, wrenching that one open and nearly yanking poor Elynea off her feet.

“Oh! Lenna! Careful!” she squeaked over the stack of folded gray robes in her arms, her surprised look quickly shifting to concern when their eyes met. Lylenna was fighting back her panic. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

Lylenna furiously shook her head “I have to… I’ve got to go,” was all she managed before she pushed past Elynea into the levitation sigil, leaving the poor alchemist in a spluttering and confused state.

Her head had not even cleared the platform before she was calling for Neloth.

“Azura help me, woman,” he yelped, “_What _is the matter with you?”

“Ulfric gods-damn Stormcloak!” she howled back, “And his despicable, disgusting cruel existence!” She stormed over the room and slammed her fists into the table, sending tremors through the delicate glassware upon it. The soft clinking of glass was the only sound to be heard for a long, heavy moment before Lenna drew an unsteady breath and shakily held the parchment out for Neloth to take. He skimmed the message, a disdainful curl taking to his lip as he reached the final lines of the short missive. Lenna glared vacantly at the wooden grain of the table, numb fury holding her fast as Neloth neatly and calmly folded the paper with such passive malice in only the way one who is well practiced in controlling one’s outer emotions is capable. 

“I will be leaving at dawn,” she said. Though her words were quiet, the rage behind them roiled and sent a chill down Neloth’s spine. She turned, catching his eye: “It is high time that Ulfric learned his place.” 


End file.
